Great article on CNN concerning the latest web trends of 2010

Last Month Rupert Murdoch, in an attempt to keep his subscription-based model for content working, threatened to use legal methods to prevent Google and other search engine “news aggregators” from taking his newspapers’ material. To add to this – large news publishers were reportedly being courted by Microsoft to de-list their news content from Google’s index.

An interesting aspect of this issue is of course the fact that Mr. Murdoch who started the attack against Google happens to be co-owner of Microsoft Bing.

So, this has caused some change with the way Google handles Subscription-based news articles. However Google claims this was actually in the works well before Murdoch’s crusade against Google.

Here are the changes

There are two changes that Google hopes will quell the discontent of media outlets. The first one is a change to its “First Click Free” program, which allows users to visit an article for free, but directs them to a sign-up page if they browse to another page. For example, if you visited a Wall Street Journal article from Google News, you’d get the full article for free, but would have to pay for other articles. The problem is that many people now abuse this feature to get all of their WSJ articles for free. The new change will limit you to five pages per day before you must register, regardless of how you get to the website. Media outlets can opt into this program if they so desire.

The second change is actually a change to how Google’s web crawlers index pages. Publishers now have the option to tell Google’s spiders to only crawl and index the “preview pages.” This refers to pages that display the first few paragraphs of an article on subscription sites like WSJ.com in order to entice them to pay for a subscription. If a publisher chooses to have spiders crawl their articles in this manner, they will be labeled with “subscription” within Google News.

This compromise seems to make a lot of sense. Publishers who are worried that Google is exploiting them, now in turn gain more control over what is displayed on Google and Google News. Google in return doesn’t lose publisher content.

We have to wait and see if these changes in the design will be enough to appease Murdoch and company. These changes seem pretty fair.

Ten years in the making and culled from 5000 hours of footage,  WE LIVE IN PUBLIC reveals the effect the web is having on our society, as seen through the eyes of “the greatest Internet pioneer you’ve never heard of”, artist, futurist and visionary Josh Harris. Award-winning director  Ondi Timoner documented his tumultuous life for more than a decade to create a riveting, cautionary tale of what to expect as the virtual world inevitably takes control of our lives.
Harris, often called the “Warhol of the Web”, founded Pseudo.com, the first Internet television network during the infamous dot-com boom of the 1990s. He also curated and funded the ground breaking project “Quiet” in an underground bunker in NYC where over 100 people lived together on camera for 30 days at the turn of the millennium. With Quiet, Harris proved how we willingly trade our privacy for the connection and recognition we all deeply desire, but with every technological advancement such as MySpace, Facebook and Twitter, becomes more elusive. Through his experiments, including a six-month stint living with his girlfriend under 24-hour electronic surveillance which led to his mental collapse, Harris demonstrated the price we pay for living in public.

http://www.weliveinpublicthemovie.com/

Adobe customers are looking to us for solutions to deliver engaging experiences and more effectively monetize their content and applications online,” says Shantanu Narayen, president and CEO of Adobe. “This is a game changer for both Adobe and our customers. We will enable advertisers, media companies and e-tailers to realize the full value of their digital assets.”

Adobe says the deal will enable advertisers, ad agencies, publishers, and e-tailers to achieve greater ROI from their digital investments while improving the end users’ experience.

The next generation of web analytics should be on the horizon… built for today’s ecommerce challenges. Adobe sees the acquisition as one that will significantly expand its addressable market and growth potential in the online advertising and e-commerce industries.
source: webpronews

Once upon a time advertisers said “we will give you high quality content in media such as television, radio, newspapers, and magazines, in exchange for a short interruption from our sponsor.”  That deal has changed — leaving consumers with the power. Actually consumers have had the power for quite some time since things such as: TiVo and DVRs, Satellite Radio, even RSS feeds and Google reader have come about – changing the effectiveness of online advertisements. Even spam filters have changed the way email campaigns are run. Consumers are creating their own content with blogs, social networks and wikis and over the past 3 years or so, advertisers have lost more and more of the “power”.

So, why write this article now, if we have know about this change for quite some time ? Well, during the current recession, advertisers and marketers have learned that interactive marketing is more effective, and much less expensive… leaving the most effective ways of marketing absolutely free (but requiring much more creativity to make them work properly).

Most marketing budgets are increasing on the interactive side by shifting money away from traditional marketing – even in this recession – and with most businesses running very lean – they are seeing a difference. One huge factor in all of this is that big business leaders are now understanding, using and embracing what they did not 3 years ago. Digital marketing is not experimental any longer. Not only does it generate leads that are much more targeted (consumers go to the businesses and brands they are attracted to – rather than brands and businesses hammering their message into consumers, interrupting the flow of valuable content) and brand buzz, but the metrics to prove it!

Digital is now at the core of so many campaigns

People have been saying the end of mass media and traditional advertising is coming to an end for years now. We can now prove it with the 6-yr interactive marketing spend forecast released from Forrester, and in the tough times of this economy — creativity has reigned strong over big ad dollars!

Social media, viral advertising and getting consumers to buy what you are selling is no longer about hammering them over the head with huge costly campaigns. The best things in life are free… well almost.

It still takes hard work, know-how, creativity and a driving passion for what you do. Those of us who have been doing it for the past 10 years and have grown up alongside it — are now finessing our ways – and can be ahead of some others out there. But there’s still time, and if your in advertising, learn the language, and most important of all – learn how to apply it!

In our school days teachers rewarded conformity, color inside the lines, make your letters like everyone else and obey the rules. As we got older even our bosses and the companies that we worked for stressed conformity, even in our highly creative industry of web design and interactive advertising. The entertaining video from TED implies that learning institutions should encourage creative thoughts and thinking differently, but they fall short at present.

Today you might be in business for yourself and if we have let conformity reign then it will be very hard to stand out, become what you have hoped and be your grand success. As Paula puts it “…There is a fine line to being noticed or notable. Being noticed can be a negative thing.  I’m sure you’ve experienced those people that upon first introduction see it as their cue to launch into a sales pitch.  Once you get a reputation like this, people often avoid them knowing what’s to come. It’s noticeable, but not in a good way.”

Be Notable, and do something so exceptional that it’s impossible for anyone to deny you are the very best person for the job. Having a very strong unique selling proposition (USP) that you back up and deliver is one of your best ways to become notable.

Average is not exceptional. Don’t just look for an okay way to do business, seek opportunities to be unique and stand alone. This requires taking risks, that might fail, but as the video from TED puts it… fail many times to eventually succeed and find creative ways to exploit the good aspects of our tiny failures that all surmount to grand success and superiority.