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| Council Created to Regulate Aggregation, Bloggers | | Monday, March 12, 2012 10:53 PM | Alissa Skelton |
|  Information hits the Web and just like that the news spreads like fire. Stories are frantically re-reported and some are missing an important detail -- attribution. David Carr, media reporter for The New York Times, wrote an article on Monday about a group of editors who plan to establish guidelines for ethical aggregation and blogging and another journalism duo who have created symbols they call the Curator's Code. Simon Dumenco, Ad Age's editor at large, Bill Falk, editor-in-chief of The Week, Julia Turner deputy editor of Slate will be on the "Is Aggregation Theft?" panel on Tuesday during the South by Southwest conference in Austin, TX., to discuss the promotion of a news organization's work versus stealing reporting. Over the weekend on another panel, Dumenco introduced The Council on Ethical Blogging and Aggregation as a way to set standards for aggregators, Carr reported. Editors from The New York Observer, The Atlantic, Esquire, Longreads.com and New York Magazine have joined the committee. Demenco told Carr the council would be set up similar to the American Society of Magazine Editors, which has created editorial standards for the magazine industry. One key issue Dumenco told Carr he wants to address is the fact site traffic isn't also routed back to the original source of news. Demenco didn't tell Carr many details about what sort of guidelines for aggregation will be set in place or how will they be enforced. His basic message is aggregation isn't bad if done properly. It's a simple idea really. Give credit where it's due. Carr quoted Demenco saying: "This is not an anti-aggregation group, we are pro-aggregation. We want some simple, common-sense rules. There should be some kind of variation of the Golden Rule here, which is that you should aggregate others as you would wish to be aggregated yourself." The committee has support from big name editors, but how will the Council on Ethical Blogging and Aggregation reel-in the blogosphere? A Gawker reporter responded to Carr's piece by saying the committee is unneeded. The rebuttal blog post was slapped with this headline, "We Don't Need No Stinking Seal of Approval from the Blog Police." "This sort of top-down, expert-heavy, credential-credulous media structure is exactly what blogging has so brilliantly been destroying for more than a decade," Hamilton Nolan, a senior writer wrote. "The internet is where the upstarts are on equal footing with the experts." Others in the industry have picked out the Council's missing links, too. Mediabistro, a well-known news aggregator, thinks the Council is a good idea, but noted the problems the committee is facing. "Maybe the most troubling thing is that for a group developing rules for bloggers, there aren't many bloggers taking part," Chris O'Shea wrote in his Mediabistro article. The other big idea that has emerged during South by Southwest is the Curator's Code, which is Reporter Maria Popova's idea that writers could stamp their articles with a symbol to note whether the the original news was reported by another news organization or was inspired by another article, Carr reported. Kelli Anderson designed two symbols that would offer a crutch for reporters to clearly state whether the story was "via" another source or a "hat tip." (Check out the symbols in the New York Times column.) "Discovery of information is a form of intellectual labor," Popova told the Carr. "When we don't honor discovery, we are robbing somebody's time and labor. The Curator's Code is an attempt to solve some of that." So what do you think? Does the news and blogging industry need aggregation guidelines? Sound off in the comments. Image courtesy of iStockphoto, TommL |
| Yahoo Sues Facebook Over 10 Patents | | Monday, March 12, 2012 5:59 PM | Todd Wasserman |
|  Yahoo on Monday made good on its promise to sue Facebook, alleging in a complaint that Facebook violated 10 patents. The complaint, filed in the U.S. District Court in San Jose, Calif., makes a case that Yahoo innovated on several fronts, including messaging, news feed generation, social commenting advertising display, preventing click fraud and privacy controls. "Facebook was not launched until 2004, 10 years after Yahoo was founded," the complaint reads. "Facebook has since grown to be one of the most widely trafficked sites on the Internet. That growth, however, has been based in a large part on Facebook's use of Yahoo's patented technology." The complaint also quotes Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg as acknowledging that "getting there first is not what it's all about." Further on, it states, "Facebook's entire social network model, which allows users to create profiles for and connect with, among other things, persons and businesses, is based on Yahoo's patented social networking technology." Yahoo's suit, which seeks unspecified damages, comes at an awkward time for Facebook. The social networking giant is expected to launch an IPO in May to raise $5 billion. Yahoo, meanwhile, risks being seen as desperate in engaging in patent trolling as its revenues and market share continue to slip. The suit comes after Yahoo and Facebook were apparently unable to work out an agreement over the issue. Yahoo was in talks with Facebook over its patent claims last month, according to a report in The New York Times. At the time, Yahoo was threatening a lawsuit if Facebook didn't pay licensing fees, according to the report. Image courtesy of Flickr, Eric Hayes Complaint for Patent Infringement |
| Gilt.com's Half-Price Car Deal Sells in 2.5 Seconds [VIDEO] | | Monday, March 12, 2012 5:45 PM | Alissa Skelton |
|  If you want a half-price 2013 Infiniti JX crossover, get in line behind 4,600 people on the wait list. Though, getting in line won't do much good either. This was a one-shot deal for charity. Gilt Groupe offered one vehicle at half-price -- $27,425 -- at noon EST on Monday and one lucky person scooped up the vehicle in 2.5 seconds, said Caitlyn Carpanzano, a Gilt spokesperson. After six minutes, more than 2,000 people jumped on the waiting list, which reached 4,600 by 2:45 p.m. EST. The brand-new vehicle retails at $54,850. Nissan won't profit from the sale. Infiniti -- a sponsor of NCAA Men's Basketball -- will donate $54,850 to Coaches vs. Cancer, an American Cancer Society and the National Association of Basketball Coaches effort to fight cancer and increase awareness about the disease. Infiniti and Gilt also sold a limited number of VIP ticket and hotel packages for the final rounds of the upcoming NCAA Tournament. Packaged ranged from $800 to $3,500 and included travel, hotel and tickets. All packages sold out within an hour of going live on Gilt. Infiniti's partnership with Gilt seems to be a way for Infiniti to brand itself as a luxury brand. This isn't the first time Gilt, a shopping site that offers deals on luxury items, has sold cars for a discounted price. Last October, Gilt sold a 2012 Range Rover Evoque Prestige. In December 2010, Gilt offered three Jettas for $5,995. The vehicle and NCAA tourney deals are open for 60 hours. But, it's not likely you'll get your hands on a shiny new vehicle or a trip to the NCAA tourney. Image courtesy of Gilt. |
| Visual.ly Launches a Tool for Self-Serve Custom Infographics | | Monday, March 12, 2012 1:54 PM | Sarah Kessler |
|  Startup design community Visual.ly launched a new tool on Monday that aims to generate custom infographics on anything from sports to the economy -- in one click. The tool will eventually use APIs from sources including ESPN, the Economist and social media sites to compile and create data visualizations. At its launch, the startup is offering templates that use the Facebook or Twitter API. One of them, for instance, creates a "Facebook Monster" from your profile that is designed to represent you. It uses Face.com's face-recognition API to figure out if you are, for instance, wearing glasses in your profile pic and adjusts the monster accordingly. In the final infographic, the monster includes props that indicate your interests and stats such as what percentage of your photos you smile in. Another infographic template called "Twitter Showdown" compares two Twitter handles of your choice. "Life of a Hashtag" shows number of mentions and top influencers for any hashtag, and "Facebook Insights" puts all of your brand page information into one visual report. Visual.ly co-founder and CEO Stew Langille tells Mashable he envisions designers developing templates for automated infographics in order to promote their work. When the automated versions don't cut it, users might hire the designer to further customize the visualization. For experienced designers, the tool can function like a data crutch. Since last summer when it launched as a community for visual data designers, about 11,000 infographics have been added to Visual.ly by about 4,000 designers. The site says it gets about 2 million unique visitors per month. |
| Facebook's 6-Point Plan for Building Brands in the Social Media Age | | Monday, March 12, 2012 1:40 PM | Todd Wasserman |
|  The Digital Marketing Series is supported by HubSpot, an inbound marketing software company based in Cambridge, Mass., that makes a full platform of marketing software, including social media management tools. Social media has turned the purchase funnel on its head. That's the crux of a study that Facebook recently published in conjunction with Forrester Research. The two canvassed 101 C-level and VP-level marketing pros in December 2011 and found the profession has changed. Or, in Facebook and Forrester's parlance, "The connected world has rerouted the customer journey." How does changing media affect the way people hear about brands? First, take a look at the traditional purchase funnel: It's easy to see how this reflects a TV-dominated age. In the pre-social media days, you'd see a TV ad and become aware of a brand. Then, after you got familiar with the name, you might consider if you wanted to buy it. Next, you bought it. Then, you might decide you liked it. Finally, you identified yourself with the brand. ("I'm a Budweiser guy.") Here is what Facebook and Forrester are proposing as the successor to the purchase funnel. It looks more like a circle: In this schematic, social media influences every stage of the process. They hear about new brands and investigate said brands via social media. When it comes time to buy something, consumers increasingly consult their friends via social media. Then, they expect to be able to interact with the brands through social media after they buy a product. The new environment calls for new tactics. Facebook and Forrester propose a six-point plan for building brands in the social media age: articulate, connect, engage, influence, integrate and rejuvenate. We will look at each in greater detail. 1. Articulate Facebook and Forrester recommend that companies identify components of the brand it can communicate via social media. The report has a suggestion for how to do this. "Apply a social lens to your brand identity by asking 'What about my brand is inherently social? Why do people engage with it and why do people want to talk about it or share it with their friends in the real world?'" Often, those attributes aren't obvious. For instance, Secret, Procter & Gamble's deodorant brand for women, found it got currency by connecting with women on an inspirational level and got behind a Facebook-based anti-bullying campaign, "Mean Stinks." For Coca-Cola, the attribute was "happiness," which it attempts to express via social media. 2. Connect Building connections via social media requires that a brand create a hub. Not surprisingly, Facebook suggests that a brand's Facebook presence should be that hub. As an example, the report illustrates how Ford used Facebook as its primary meeting place for information around the June 2010 launch of the 2011 Explorer. All communications in that effort drove fans to Ford's Facebook Page, which was the online venue for that model's reveal. 3. Engage Getting consumers to take part in the conversation is a key component of social media marketing. The way to facilitate such conversation is often easier than you might think. Burt's Bees, for example, launched its tinted lip balm with a Facebook app that let users send a photo of one of the six products in the line, along with a message explaining why the friend is a "natural beauty." The brand also ran ads in Facebook's Sponsored Stories format to help fans get the word out. 4. Influence The thinking here is that you allow your social media fans to feel like insiders. A good example is PepsiCo India, which tied into the Cricket World Cup in that country in 2011 with an ad campaign. The company broke the ads on Facebook before they hit TV though and selected 11 special brand ambassadors on Facebook to attend every match and post status updates and photos on Facebook. 5. Integrate People don't compartmentalize their social media experiences. Neither should your brand. A good example of a 360-degree approach to marketing that incorporates social media is American Express's "Link, Like, Love" program, which syncs a cardmember's Facebook account with their loyalty program, so that if you "like" Whole Foods for instance, you might see a Whole Foods deal in your Facebook dashboard. 6. Rejuvenate In practice, this means being relevant to your fans. In other words, you have to sort of think like a publisher. If something big happens in the news, and there's a relevant way for you to make note of it, it's probably a good idea to do so. As an example, beauty brand Sephora has 2.5 million Facebook fans and Sephora "continuously monitors those fans for insights about its products, stores and customer service." AT&T also has a dedicated team that keeps an eye on its Facebook Page. It should be noted that Facebook is hardly objective in its advice. The major piece of advice seems to be "use Facebook for all your marketing." Nevertheless, just because it's in Facebook's best interest for you to use its platform doesn't mean it's a bad idea. But, as a marketer, you should be able to distinguish truth from bluster. Series supported by HubSpot
The Digital Marketing Series is supported by HubSpot, an inbound marketing software company based in Cambridge, Mass., that makes a full platform of marketing software, including social media management tools. Image courtesy of iStockphoto, sodafish |
| Retail Mobile Sites Still Win Over Retail Apps [STUDY] | | Monday, March 12, 2012 12:40 PM | Stan Schroeder |
|  Big online retailers are still reaching far more users with their mobile websites than their mobile apps, Nielsen's latest report shows. The report was conducted on 5,000 U.S. smartphone users who participated in the research. It shows that the combined reach for five big online retailers - Amazon, eBay, Target, Best Buy and Walmart - was around 50% of users for their mobile website, and around 25% of users for their mobile app in the period from October 2011 till January 2012. The combined reach averaged 52% to 59%. Out of these five retailers, Amazon is by far the biggest, with its mobile website having a reach of over 15% in this period. It is followed by eBay with a 5% reach, and Walmart, Best Buy and Target, all of which have a reach lower than 5%. Interestingly enough, though, all of these retailers experienced a healthy reach "bump" on Black Friday, except eBay, whose bump was significantly less noticeable. Finally, Nielsen's report unveils a gender discrepancy between the mobile website visitors of these five retailers. Best Buy is predominantly visited by males (61%), while females (65% of them, to be exact) prefer Target. Walmart's mobile website is also preferred by females, while eBay and Amazon are equally preferred by male and female visitors. Image credit: Nielsen |
| 6 Things You Wish Your iPad Could Do for Business | | Monday, March 12, 2012 10:46 AM | Lauren Hockenson |
|  The iPad for Business Series is supported by LogMeIn. Get remote access to your PC or Mac from any device, anywhere -- for free. There's a lot of talk about the "post-PC" era, and with the announcement of the new iPad and all of its upgraded features, it seems like we're getting closer than ever to full-time tablet use. And with innovative uses developing in multiple industries, we feel the device is taking baby steps into the big leagues. But for those who are interested in using their iPad for all of their business needs, even some of the new features are lacking. Mashable spoke with business people and members of our community to gauge at what is actually missing from their iPads -- and what they'd like to see implemented in the near future. This wish list highlights six of these requests, both for hardware and software, from the community. Overall, the message is clear: Those who use their iPad full-time for business-related ventures feel that it's not fully equipped for every scenario. Whether it's providing proper function during presentations or properly interfacing with work PCs, there's plenty more that Apple can do to make its tablet more helpful in daily business situations. What do you wish your iPad could do for your business? Let us know in the comments. Series supported by LogMeIn
The iPad for Business Series is supported by LogMeIn, the easiest way to get to your computer from anywhere. From any device, you can quickly and securely connect to your PC or Mac, access your files, run applications and get stuff done. Get LogMeIn for free today. |
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