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Microsoft eyes Yahoo
2008-02-01 16:35:00
The Internet may never be the same again with the announcement today that Microsoft wants to buy Yahoo . In its ongoing battle to thwart Google, the software giant is willing to put out $45 billion dollars for Yahoo, an aquisition that would potentially be the largest in tech history. With rumours swirling lately of mass layoffs at Yahoo and its declining stock price, the Microsoft offer (which isn’t its first) could be a lifeline or a nail in the coffin of the search engine giant. It would also consolidate further the SEO arena with 2 giant behemoths facing up. It will be interesting to see what happens but for us punters it can only mean one thing: a viable alternative to Google for on-line advertising. A shake up in Internet advertising can only be good given their monopolistic dominance.
More About: Eyes , Yahoo!

New Media Reasons To Be Cheerful
2008-01-31 17:13:00
Back by popular demand is our monthly reasons to be cheerful post where we share the new media discoveries we have made over the last month so that you too can feel the joy! Process and operations have been a big focus lately - getting our shop in ship shape as it were so you’ll see a bit of a pattern in this month’s reasons - they all help us do business a little more effectively: Toggl - allows you and your project managers to track their time effectively over the Net. Because its all done on-line it allows your managers to track their time even when they are at customer sites. Simple yet so powerful. Ta-da Lists - our friends over at BlueLime Media tipped us off to this one. Here at Out-Smarts we are always writing lists for everything from sales targets and marketing to-do’s to lunches. Ta-da provides a great way to keep track of these on your desktop and to share them with colleagues. No excuses now for forgetting those 2008 resolutions. BlogFuse - recentl...
More About: Reasons , New Media

Attract More Blog Visitors
2008-01-29 18:51:00
Here’s a quandary: you have something valuable to say, you set up a blog and set about sharing your ruminations. The blog begins to attract visitors and subscribers but they trickle in at best. What do you do to attract a larger audience? Check out how other bloggers do it thats how! Here are some great success stories with vital tips you can take advantage of: ProBlog ger has a really detailed post from the writer of ThinkSimpleNow sharing the detailed strategies they used to go from zero to 2000 visitors in the space of 3 months. Dosh Dosh celebrated 10,00 subscribers by sharing the reasons why people subscribe to that blog. Entrepreneur Magazine featured an article from John Chow a local boy who makes huge amounts of money from his blog. Out-Smarts has already started to implement some of the ideas these bloggers were kind enough to share and our visitor count has gone up by about 50% in just a few days. I guess the results speak for themselves.   Thank...
More About: Visitors

Behold the Power of Facebook For Business
2008-01-28 16:46:00
Local new media aficionado and funny girl Monica Hamburg known for her hilarious “Your Dose of Lunacy” posts and the more serious “Me Like the Interweb” blog, wrote a great piece recently on Facebook for business. Here it is in it’s entirety - you can’t fail to learn from it: Behold the Power of Facebook For Business With Facebook’s more than 55 million active users, it would be a tragic oversight for a company not to have a public presence on the site in some capacity. Facebook offers more than a way to keep up with friends – it has the ability to keep you in touch with your clients, gain attention for your brand and provide a more personal face for your business. The nature of Facebook is entirely viral, and users can garner information from their friends and their interactions. Facebook can be an unintrusive way of making people aware of your business. Recently, the social networking website has allowed businesses to create profiles for ...

Another Tech Bubble….
2008-01-25 16:36:00
Here for your Friday enjoyment is a funny little clip found on YouTube all about the social networking tech bubble.  Blog in the womb indeed!
More About: Tech

Top Facebook Applications
2008-01-24 23:32:00
Comscore today released their Widget Matrix results (yes widgets are officially important enough to justify a report all to themselves) ranking the web widget viewing audience. A widget just in case you’ve been living in a cave for a while is a little application embedded in a web site such as those fun applications that make your Facebook profile so distracting. I was interested to see that the 2nd most popular Facebook app  was the Flixster Movies Widget an app (with over 5 million active users in the US) that allows you to share and rate your movie experiences with friends and strangers alike. This is a great example of how an organisation, with a little imagination and ingenuity can use Facebook applications to reach a wider audience and to reinforce its brand.
More About: Applications

Wired - Blog Post Mapping
2008-01-23 16:36:00
The new Wired magazine arrived today and in it (p132) is a great map of “The Secret Life of a Blog Post ” - a cartographic view of what happens between hitting publish and your post reaching its audience. Apparently when you post, your musing goes through several scrapes, pings, indexes and crawls automatically before reaching the reader. Well that might be the case for blogs hosted in a blog service like Wordpress but I have found that for corporate branded blogs that are an extension of a companies web site that this is not the case at all: you have to do the legwork yourself if you want your blog to be picked up by all the right creepers. Here are some tips: Always remember to set up auto pings or manual pings with blog engines like: Technorati so that these servers know your blog is out there and crawl it for updates and new posts. Remember also to submit the blog URL to search engines and set up auto pings with those too. And lastly submit your blog feeds to RSS ag...
More About: Mapping

10 New Media Ways to Market
2008-01-23 06:09:00
1. Use Twitter to market to you audience (assuming your audience are Twits that is (or should that be Tweets?). It can be used for branding and networking effectively. Dosh dosh lists 17 more Twitter marketing applications and innovative Tweet uses. 2. Participate in the blogosphere. Find blogs pertaining to your industry or your target audience and get commenting. You would be amazed at how this can help spread the word. 3. Find out about new technologies that make it easier for people to do business with you - like Skype - the on-line phone service or that help you present your offering more effectively - like Flickr the photo site -  and make full use of them on your website. 4. Get creative with video clips about your company: make them quirky, funny or alternative and post on YouTube. You never know, this could be the next big meme. 5. If your not comfortable with writing blog comments or posts or are camera shy, why not consider a Podcasting your message. Its much eas...
More About: Media , Market , New Media

XO is Here
2008-01-21 16:33:00
After quite a while waiting our XO is finally here and I can only say good things about it so far. Firstly its much smaller than I had expected and not cheap and tacky at all (for a $200 laptop you expect it to be crappy to some degree). Its compact and easy to use - my kids are already making music on it albeit chicken sounds. The best part is that, after spending hours at CES hunting down the ideal blogging device, it was on its way to me all along. Indeed, I could see using this nifty little machine to blog from practically anywhere: after all it is weather proof so it will endure the rainy season and the battery lasts for ages. Given that for each one you buy another is donated to a needy child, I wish I had bought another so I wouldn’t have to fight my kids for it!

Deep Thoughts and Distractions
2008-01-18 16:23:00
Some times its just easier to watch to garbage truck than to put your thoughts into writing.
More About: Thoughts , Deep Thoughts , Deep , Distractions

Facebook in Decline
2008-01-17 19:35:00
According to our local rag the Vancouver Sun, Facebook - the popular social network, has seen a decline in it’s growth rate recently. Hardly surprising given the phenomenal traffic statistics the site was enjoying last year. Before all you professionals abandon ship consider this: Nexopia - aimed at the teeny crowd - is the fastest growing site on the Internet in terms of ranking. Could it be that the younger set are heading elsewhere as their elders infiltrate the Facebook world. Sounds like great news to me - let the teenies go off and enjoy inane drivel like “write your crush on a note” or “find out who you will marry” (their terms not mine!) and leave Facebook to the grown ups and professionals looking to use social networks effectively and productively.

Banish Blog Nerves
2008-01-16 20:13:00
I attended a great presentation last night at the Professional Women’s Network meeting here in not so sunny Vancouver. It was all about leadership and it was great to hear that I am not the only one who gets her knickers in a twist (metaphorically speaking off course!) in advance of unknown situations. The speaker, Tana Heminsley talked about measures that you can take in advance of challenging meetings to make it easier on yourself. I found them particularly interesting as many of these can be applied to new blogosphere participants, nervous about joining the conversation. Preparation - in advance of a meeting Tana pointed out that its always good to find out as much as you can about the subject matter, research the topic and get a feel for issues. Same goes for the blogosphere: before commenting on blogs or launching your own blog its important to research and find out what people are already saying about your area of interest, find out what the hot topics are and watch ...
More About: Blog

The Trouble With Internet Advertising
2008-01-15 20:02:00
As you know, here at Out-Smarts we are champions of Internet advertising: in the main because it is more effective at reaching a highly targeted audience, but from an audience perspective Internet Ads can miss the mark or have a counter effect. Ads are popping up all over Facebook these days and I’ve been interested in getting people’s view on these. In general most people I’ve talked to don’t mind the ads too much, some don’t even seem to notice they are there. However there has been negative comments: one Facebook user told me that a flashing pink ad on the screen was so abusive that he got a cracking headache and had to go and do something else - not likely to click through on that is he? I myself was offended by a series of ads for weight loss products (just because its the New Year and I am woman does not mean I am obsessed by my weight). So advertisers beware, when creating ads test and try them and think about who your audience truly is and ...
More About: Advertising

The Four Hour Work Week by Timothy Ferriss
2008-01-14 16:39:00
This book is packed with great advice for people who want to live life to the full without being shackled to a normal work routine - he calls it joining the “new rich”.  So why am I still here - you may ask?!  (Perhaps its because I actually enjoy what I do and I already set my own hours).   The author gave up on the daily working drudgery and apparently has ample income from a series of practically self performing products sold over the Internet.  In the book he provides tips on how you can do the same - he even gives sample scripts for those looking to quit their jobs or work more on their terms (i.e. from home or fewer hours).   The most  useful part of the book is the chapter where he describes ways to reduce your daily load including assessing whether something is actually worth doing, out sourcing chunks of your work to others such as on-line assistants, book keepers and researchers like Assistu in North America or b2k Corp in India.  They key is pr...
More About: Work , Timothy , Week , Hour

Advertising - How Things Change
2008-01-11 09:13:00
Check out these ads from yesteryear compiled by Odee for a good laugh to end the week. Its funny to see just how much attitudes have changed. My favorite: for a better start in life start cola earlier!
More About: Advertising , Change , Things

Taking The Blogosphere Seriously
2008-01-10 19:05:00
At a session I attended this week at CES questions were posed of 4 panelists on the subject of taking the blogosphere seriously. The panelists consisted of industry experts including “rock star” blogger (the mediator’s title not mine) Ryan Block from Engadget. Here are a couple of the questions posed with my slant on the answers: Who isn’t taking the blogosphere seriously? Answer - there are 70 million blogs out there and thousands more added daily if corporations aren’t taking it seriously then a heck of a big chunk of their client base is. Simply put there are people who get it and people who don’t. Those who do are reaping the rewards and those who don’t face extinction. When asked how the panelists would approach convincing a CEO to blog, the general consensus seemed to be that if a company isn’t using the blogosphere (either to listen or to communicate) then they risk losing control of their brand completely. Judging by th...
More About: Blogosphere , Taking

Call Yourself a CES Blogger
2008-01-09 21:32:00
We just got back from the Consumer Electronics Show in Vegas and what a blast that was with over 2,700 vendors showcasing everything from the latest, skinniest, largest TVs to desktop clocks of all things. I went to the show with great intentions of blogging from the floor but alas my laptop died en route. Not to worry I thought - I’ll be able to access the Internet at a booth and indeed that was the case but my intentions were thwarted once again as I was unable to find the site because I had a symbol in the wrong place of my long convoluted login URL. What a cheek I have to call myself a blogger when instead of real time posts I am reduced to this - 2 days later…. Still the whole experience was good as it gave me focus at an otherwise overwhelming event. My focus: to find the device of my dreams that would enable me to easily blog regardless of where I am. In my hunt I looked at smart phones, laptops and other PDA type devices and I want to share my 2 favorites -...
More About: Blogger , Call

Where in the Blog World?
2008-01-04 21:16:00
One of the best aspects of blogging is finding out where your audience comes from. Google analytics has a great mapping tool that allows you to view where your traffic is from at a glance (its especially useful if you are considering expansion into new territories) and I do love to check out the diverse locations of our visitors. We’re located in Vancouver BC and off course the bulk of our traffic comes from Canada but this blog attracts visitors from all over the world from Korea to South Africa, from Alaska to Australia. Hello to you all!!! There’s one anomaly in our traffic stats and that is the number of visits we get from the UK. You would think, given our proximity to the US that traffic from there would be second only to Canada but thats not the case at all, in fact we consistently get much more traffic from the UK than the US. This is a quandary I’ve been puzzling over for a while now. Could it be the writing style? Or Perhaps its because the cont...
More About: World , Blog

A Web Site Is Not Enough
2008-01-03 20:17:00
Back in the last century the web was seen as a great way to create an on-line brochure. The idea was that if you had a web presence you could be attracting new business 24/7 while you were sleeping. Alas the days of the static website have come to an end. Its simply not good enough these days to slap up a web site and leave it to stagnate for months. There’s nothing worse from an audience perspective than returning to a website that hasn’t changed since your last visit or worse a site that has dated “news”. I don’t know about you but when I go to a site like that I assume the company is kaput and go elsewhere. A website is no different from having a phone, if no one knows your number then no one is going to call, if you don’t answer or return your calls then having the phone is pointless. Interaction is key. Likewise a website is simply a tool to facilitate business but if there’s no interaction you may as well not bother. Fortunatel...
More About: Site , Web site

2008 Predictions
2008-01-01 11:45:00
2006 was the year of YouTube and 2007 was the year of Facebook so what will 2008 bring? I predict we will finally see companies grasping the potential of social media marketing. Little light bulbs will start switching on as executives and entrepreneurs finally get it. Social media marketing uses the collaborative nature and social gathering ans sharing places of the Internet to spread awareness of a product service or organisation. We’ll see more organisations take advantage of tools like Flickr and YouTube to improve customer service and enhance satisfaction using product images, video demonstrations as well as to spread awareness via unique and innovative clips. Organisations will recognise the benefits of blogging outlined just today in an article by Duct Tape Marketing called Blogg Dammit! and implement effective blog strategies. Social Networks will no longer be the domain of youth and students and will instead become a vital component in any business’s on-l...
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Holiday Greetings To All Our Readers
2007-12-24 15:51:00
Here’s to prosperity for you and yours for 2008! We’ll be taking a little break over the holidays - blog you in the New Year!
More About: Holiday , Readers , Holiday Greetings

Facebook Over Populated Hoax - The Aftermath
2007-12-21 20:12:00
The other day I posted the Facebook hoax Funwall message and wanted to follow up on the aftermath.  There’s been a lot of discussion about this hoax in the blogosphere and turns out that my mentioning it brought many new visitors to this blog (welcome!).  The message was indeed a hoax (as if that wasn’t obvious).  Apparently it was created by 2 girls with bad grammar  and nothing better to do with their time (get a life ladies).  There’s talk that they will be cast out of the network (Social Network purgatory if you will….).  But you have to give it to them for creating a viral meme.  Word of the hoax spread quickly and Facebook itself reacted on its blog by outlining how they communicate with users in the event that they need to do so.Here’s an excerpt:”We will never use any of the following methods to tell you information, or ask for you to take an action:   Your Wall An inbox message from a friend— in other words, chain letters....
More About: Hoax , Pula

Social Networking Friend Strategies
2007-12-20 15:34:00
How to manage your Facebook friends is something everyone should consider when joining a social network. Marc Cuban the Blog Maverick and owner of the Dallas Mavericks had a good post last week pointing out how he adds Facebook friends. He gets almost 100 requests to add new “friends” daily and given the number of friends he has he recently hit the 5k friend limit and had to start weeding. Here is how he does it: “The first layer has my real friends. Those people who who I have actually met in real life and who I enjoy keeping in touch with. FB provides a great way to keep up with things with them via pictures, notifications, etc. The 2nd layer is people who I have tangential connections to. They may just live in Dallas Fort Worth. They may be self proclaimed Mavs or MMA or movie fans, or in groups I’m in. For whatever reason there is something about them that I could connect to. The 3rd layer is emerging as a very unique and interesting network in FB. Its ...
More About: Social , Social Networking , Networking , Strategies , Friend

Facebook Over Populated?
2007-12-19 19:44:00
I recently received a Facebook Funwall post claiming to be from Mark Zukkerberg regarding the over population of Facebook. I thought I would forward it so you could get a good laugh at the grammatical errors and typos (its attached below). As my friend Jamie pointed out, Facebook has other ways to track whether you are using your profile regularly and this is probably a hoax to slow down the system not to mention that they “kindly ask for donations” - aye right! Here it is: Attention all Facebook members. Facebook is recently becoming very overpopulated, There have been many members complaining that Facebook is becoming very slow.Record shows that the reason is that there are too many non-active Facebook members And on the other side too many new Facebook members. We will be sending this messages around to see if the Members are active or not,If you’re active please send to other users using Copy+Paste to show that you are active Those who do not send this messag...
More About: Pula

Webkinz On-line Ad Strategy Backfires
2007-12-18 07:52:00
If you have kids you’ve no doubt heard about the Webkinz craze that has been sweeping elementary schools. Webkinz are stuffed animals that come with a free one year subscription to the Webkinz web site where kids can play games and interact with their toy on-line. The offering has been hugely successful but Ganz may have overstepped the mark by announcing their intentions to use the site to as an advertising revenue stream. An article in the New York times last week stirred up the controversy and The Campaign for a Commercial Free Childhood quickly activated a viral machine that went into overdrive to ensure that schools were informed. At my children’s school alone every parent was e-mailed with a warning notifying them of Webkinz use of Ads and encouraging parents to “Tell Ganz: Stop Advertising on Webkinz”. There’s an opportunity here in our Web 2.0 world for Ganz to respond to the criticism in a positive way by outlining the types of ads that will ...
More About: Strategy , On-line , Line , On Line

Effective Wiki Implementation
2007-12-14 15:31:00
Thinking of using wikis to effectively collaborate and increase productivity? There’s a great article in e-week’s insight section giving 25 valuable tips that you should consider when deploying wikis in your organization. These include: making it easy for users to use and to personalize; setting the ground rules early to ensure users know how to participate; rewarding frequent use and activity.
More About: Wiki , Effective , Implementation

Social Media Marketing Playbook
2007-12-11 15:25:00
Always leading edge, Capulet Communications have done it again with the release of their new e-book Getting To First Base: A Social Media Marketing Playbook. I found the link to this little gem in my inbox this morning and I am looking forward to some excellent holiday reading as it promises tactics to drive more traffic, increase on-line visibility and viral effect, develop blogger relationships and market your offering effectively on Facebook. I’m already looking forward to the full length book.

New Media Marketing Olympic Style
2007-12-10 15:23:00
In a little over 2 years Vancouver will host the 2010 Winter Olympic s. To celebrate this, you will be seeing a regular post discussing new media innovations from the Olympic world as seen from our independent audience perspective - after all, the Olympics is a worldwide marketing juggernaut we can all learn from. There has been much debate in Vancouver about the 2010 Olympic mascots unveiled last week. Sumi, Qatchi and Miga are already active on the VANOC Internet Site looking for you to join in the Olympic celebration with games and quizzes to keep you enthralled. I would include images of the mascots but the Olympic committee has very strict rules as to who can use them so you’ll just have to check them out for yourself. Why don’t you see which one of the mascots you are most like when you are at it? Whether or not these strict rules impact their viral marketing potential remains to be seen but the Olympic games has one of the most recognizable brands in the world...
More About: Marketing , Media , Style , New Media

Top 20 Social Networks
2007-12-06 20:03:00
Wondering about social networks? With the help of ComScore I’ve put together a list of some of the most popular sites in North America so that you can check them out for yourself. MySpace - one of the largest Facebook - one of the fastest growing in Canada for both business and personal SN. Classmates - connect with old school friends Windows Live Spaces - Microsoft’s offering AOL Hometown - blog centric Reunion - reconnect with old friends Club Penguin - for kids big and small LinkedIn - professional networking YouTube - watch and share videos AOL People Connection - chats and forums Buzznet - pop culture Friendster - make friends and find old ones Hi5 - connect with other shiny faced people Orkut - Googlearific Xanga - weblogs Flickr - photo sharing network Live Journal - blog to your hearts content Tagged - fancy a game of tag? Bebo - entertainment slant Delic.ious - share bookmarks This is by no means a complete list (there are thousands of them out there) but w...
More About: Social , Social Networks , Networks

Blog Links
2007-12-04 20:22:00
One of the best ways to drive more traffic to your blog is to have as many incoming links as possible. I found this great post at Hubspot that provides a list of blog directories you can easily submit your blog to as well as useful links to other related information and resources.
More About: Links , Blog