Onassis Escapades

Facebook over-priced?

2007-09-26T07:05:00.000-07:00

Microsoft is believed to be considering the purchase of a 5 % stake in social networking site Facebook in a deal that could value the company at up to $10 billion. My guess is there is no way it could be worth that at all considering their single revenue stream... Perhaps I am wrong but I highly doubt it.

Read more here: http://www.enn.ie/article/132622.html

Smart way around Spam?

2007-03-01T05:52:00.000-08:00

A company called Seriosity has attempted to create a mechanism of highlighting/prioritising the emails you receive. These guys believe they’ve found the right way to get people’s attention - virtual currency!

You attach a payment to an email, called a Serio, which is transferred to the recipient. The recipient can determine the importance of an email based on the size of the payment. When the reader logs in they will sort through to the higher paying emails - well that's the idea anyway.

The big question will be what one can use the accumulated serios for (aside from buying your way to the top of your recipients email in boxes).

Governments comments on SA telecoms

2007-02-12T22:55:00.000-08:00

Here is a nice little article from Business Day: PRESIDENT Thabo Mbeki once again made cheaper telecommunications a priority for the nation, but failed to say exactly how that would be achieved.

The State of the Nation address last week wasn't really exciting at all.. we all know the promises made hold as much water as a piece of granite. Mbeki always promises to sort out our Telecommunications sector and continued exploitation of the South African people but unfortunately Government only moves fast if something benefits themselves.

Unfortunately Government is looking all over the place instead of at the big problem - Telkom. They have the stranglehold on international bandwidth, as well as our national fixed-line network - despite the fact that this was all built with taxpayers' money. Gov also unfortunately looks years ahead instead of right now - what happens in the meanwhile? We all get milked while Gov scores billions from Telkom and Telkom's shareholders inflate their bank accounts at the expense of a country's people. Same old, year after yea, and there we were all stupidly thinking our Gov is supposed to look after us and have the country's best interests at heart.

India.com to the rescue

2007-01-17T04:04:00.000-08:00

India's Reliance Telecommunications plans to build a submarine cable around the east of Africa that could help slash internet costs and rival the continent's own much-delayed plans for a cable.

India's involvement in the telecoms industry in SA is far less obvious than this only though. Neotel, the second operator in SA is managed by an Indian company too, Videsh Sanchar Nigam Ltd.

Let's hope this will help us, as it seems we are unable to help ourselves in this regard. Read the full story here.

Who is responsible for growing online adspend in SA?

2007-01-11T03:12:00.000-08:00

Not too many companies in SA see the true value with marketing online and/or having an online presence. It warrants a mention as I am convinced that first time companies buying online will test it once (cautiously) and if the results do not look good then a repeat buy will be unlikely. As it is, few companies in SA trust/believe it to be a viable way to make sales/build a brand/generate leads. This stems from the general perceptions due to a lack of inhouse understanding and know-how.

The onus I believe is thus on the publisher (or media planner) to ensure that they think through each clients needs and focus not only on the inventory and media placements but also on the users experience, from the creative, the landing page and the whole client site functionality. It is all too tempting to just triumphantly take a new clients money and splash banners all over the place. It would be like having a TV ad campaign driving people to a store for a promo, and when people arrive they open the front door and see a shop with no cash registers or people to help them. Why waste money driving traffic if the site is not geared up to monetize the visitors?

Responsible ad sales like this will no doubt help with perceptions about the online medium and thus generate more development into user friendly sites. This too will help the user interact and trust the online medium more so than they do now. It is an iterative process and it all starts with the online agency or media planners ensuring they help in making the first campaign meet its objectives.

South Africa dot bomb

2007-01-02T05:44:00.000-08:00

Although we all hear stories from time to time about how expensive internet connectivity is in South Africa I don’t think many appreciate how serious the problem is. The internet has changed the way the business world functions and how people communicate and Africa is yet again being left behind.

Currently SA has an internet penetration of 7.4%. In layman’s terms this means that 7.4% of those who live in SA have access to the internet. I must highlight that this is even worse than it seems, as most of these are work connections so access is not at night or on weekends. In the past 5 years usage has grown by 50%. Sounds impressive however it is not at all. To put this into perspective Egypt’s growth over the same period has been 933%, and Morocco's growth an astounding 3500%!

South Africa's penetration of 7.4% is even below Reunion (25.3%), Mauritius (14.1%), Morocco (11.6%), Sao Tome & Principe - ever even heard of them? (11.7%), Seychelles (23.8%), St. Helena (10.2%) and Tunisia (8.2%). If we go beyond Africa then it gets even more concerning. Our friends in Australia have a 68.7% internet penetration and this figure is climbing!

The concern is enormous as the internet is not just about convenient communication with email and skype, but it is also about access to information, education, empowerment and fostering entrepreneurship through lower barriers to entry and easier and cheaper international communication. From a consumers perspective too it drops the cost of comparison down to zero which is otherwise not a reality at all.

So what happened to SA being the engine of Africa?

Johan Bosini

The war against spam

2006-12-22T04:19:00.000-08:00

We all get it. We all wonder how we ended up on that list and sometimes we even wonder if perhaps that email subject line could be the truth... if we believed the emails we received however we would all be rich, having sex every day and have huge appendages of our choice. The truth is that if the spammer was not making money then they would not continue with it... so people are buying their goods then! Amazing.

As the cops get smart so too do the spammers... as it shows here from ZDNET.

A popular anti-spam service is shutting itself down, saying it is no longer effective at protecting organisations from junk email.
The Open Relay Database (ORDB) was set up by volunteers five years ago, shortly after the dot-com boom ended. It aimed to stop spammers using SMTP proxy servers — also known as open mail relays — to flood the internet with junk mail.
These proxy servers were initially used as 'middlemen' to move email from source to destination rather than sending them directly over the internet. As a consequence, they could be used to send large amounts of junk mail with little chance of detection.
ORDB distributed a blacklist of servers that operated as open relays, so that administrators could block email from these sources.
But the ORDB has recently stopped growing, and its volunteers' interest waned. While five years ago, around 90 percent of spam was sent through open relays, now the figure is less than 1 percent. Much of today's spam is propogated using botnets, which are networks of compromised computers.
The announcement that it had decided to close came on Monday.
"We regret to inform you that ORDB.org is shutting down," said the ORDB in a statement. "The general consensus within the team is that open relay RBLs [relay blocking lists] are no longer the most effective way of preventing spam from entering your network as spammers have changed tactics in recent years, as have the anti-spam community."
The ORDB said organisations should remove its checks from their mailers immediately and consider other methods of spam filtering. It recommended a combination of greylisting and content-based analysis, such as the dspam project, bmf or Spam Assassin.
Another organisation that creates blacklists of spammers has also been in the limelight recently.
Spamhaus, a UK firm with a global customer base, was ordered to pay over $11m in damages to a company it blacklisted, which claimed the move was illegal.
But it is not just the ORDB and Spamhaus which have found it difficult in their quest to tackle spam.
The Information Commissioner's Office (ICO), the privacy watchdog, admitted to ZDNet UK earlier this month that it had not successfully prosecuted any UK spammers, despite regulations designed to curb spam being brought in three years ago. The ICO says it lacks powers to combat spam, and blames its lack of power on the UK Government.
In the meantime, spam levels are still soaring. According to email security vendor IronPort systems, 63 billion spam messages were sent each day in October 2006, compared to 31 billion per day in October 2005. November saw two surges that averaged 85 billion messages a day, one from 13 November to 22 November, the other from 26 November to 28 November.

Johan Bosini

Interesting Reading

2006-07-21T12:14:00.000-07:00

A few snippets from an article by Hilton Tarant.

The portal wars are back

During the dot com boom in the late 1990s and early part of this decade media companies (and other industrial conglomerates) across the globe were in a race to gain mass audiences.

They set up extensive web “destinations” that catered to almost any need imaginable. Think Yahoo! Think Netscape.com. “If you build it, they will come,” the suits trumpeted.

This dream of getting audiences big enough to rival the other mass media (such as television and print) died abruptly. The venture capital ran out. The market lost interest in promises that people would buy groceries online. Now, just as suddenly as it disappeared, the dream has re-emerged.

The success of Google in the past few years proved though that you could make money from advertising on the web. All of a sudden, online businesses were the new black. Everyone wanted a piece of the action. Yahoo! became a respected business. Everyone from Rupert Murdoch to the New York Times wants to invest in building a meaningful presence on the internet.

Even with the restrictions on bandwidth in SA, we followed suit. Some local media companies expanded overseas, and built online divisions – scared that they’d get left behind. The road was bumpy: MWEB and Metropolis were quickly listed (and eventually delisted) on the JSE by their parent companies.

Fast-forward back to 2006 and the race is back.

Media giant Naspers gave some idea of its online plans with an announcement at the beginning of May. The editor of Die Burger, the release read, was to take the lead as editorial director of 24.com “the group’s newly founded multimedia news and entertainment portal for Africa”.

Portals are once again a priority.

The low-key launch of the 24.com site last week will undoubtedly be followed by a major ad campaign in the months to come. This “portal” offers all the usual content: news, sport, a search engine, and ancillary services like online dating. The new additions though, include a mix of “social media” like blogs, online photo albums and an instant messenger service.

But many industry watchers are asking: why this race to portals?

Simple: money is being made online.

Online advertising in SA is also growing. Chris Borain, iafrica.com CEO, said at the time of Primedia’s 365 Digital deal “We're seeing … the remarkable growth of local online advertising spend”.

Thanks to the author - Johan Bosini

Do people make money on the internet?

2006-05-18T13:27:00.000-07:00

Many people seem to think that the internet is all about google and hotmail, reading the news and possibly skype... but few seem to understand the full scope of it.

A few days ago I read about a site most people have never heard of - www.photobucket.com - and how they managed to secure 10.5 million USD in series B finance.

Photo Bucket is a photo and video storage site, and it currently consumes 2% of total US internet bandwidth... pretty amazing how people are using online tools more than ever before.

Johan Bosini

Tracking sales through online exposure

2006-04-07T12:55:00.000-07:00

We all know that online research results in an enormous amount of offline purchases. So how do you measure this? Well, it is pretty tough actually. Read here for an interesting take on how to track your online traffic to offline sales.

Johan Bosini

Photo recognition search tool

2006-03-24T10:41:00.000-08:00

The internet has desensitized us to large numbers. We see "thousands" and "millions" thrown around all the time. Do these number mean anything anymore?

Where am I heading again? Well - a new site launched recently - Riya.com - and they offer a similar service to flickr.com I guess - with one little difference - face recognition technology! No, this is not a James Bond movie, or an episode of Las Vegas, it is live and free online. Essentially, Riya's Web-based service involves photo search. But this plays down what could be one of the coolest sites around... or should I say scariest?

So where am I on the numbers thing? Well - in two days of launching Riya.com had had 2 million photos uploaded to their site by new users... 2 million... think about that for a moment. It really shows in real terms the scope of the internet, and how the world is playing (and working) by a different set of rules. Sensational I think!

More on Riya... The site asks users to upload sets of photos and then add names to faces the service doesn't recognize. Once you add a name once, the software is designed to recognize each and every instance of that person in the photo library, even if their face is just in a framed photograph on a wall in the background.

The software can also recognize text--from street signs to name tags. This is too much... what next? Microchips in my ear?

Johan Bosini

Can all brands go online?

2006-02-20T11:49:00.000-08:00

I recently (a few weeks back) read an article about internet marketing and how it is becoming a part of most companies marketing mix in South Africa. It was written by Richard Mullins from Acceleration Media - a company I have great respect for. They have certainly done a fantastic job of gaining the trust of their clients, and thus the trust of the mediums they market through. Richard wrote about how companies can see a great result by communicating to their users via online means - however I feel that it is important to highlight that companies need to develop a suitable online interface to suit their brand, product and desired outcome. The article can be read here: http://www.marketingweb.co.za/marketing/781384.htm.

Although I agree with everything Richard said, I think it is only fair to highlight (a little more so than he did) that online marketing does not suit all products, services and brands all of the time or in their current form. Currently companies that benefit most from online marketing in SA are those that offer users the ability to interact with their brand online. People enjoy the ease and convenience of, for example, applying for a home loan online, or seeing if they can get a better deal on car insurance, or even being able to purchase something right there and then, like book a flight or buy a book. I find it hard to believe that a roofing manufacturer will see great results in online spend as users for this kind of product are mostly builders, who are not (or should not) be online as much as, say, an office worker.

This leads me to my second point, I think companies need to be informed (and helped) in understanding that when they spend money online (or email marketing) the user will click through to a site - and that site is the brands front door for the next few minutes. That site needs to be well designed, offer the correct information and offer it at the right time. There are so many fantastic, interactive, visually-appealing sites around now, that if a company offers a flat site that does not allow the user to get what he or she wants, the brand will not see any ROI on their online campaigns. If the site offers no solution or information to the user then potentially the relationship with the brand has been destroyed before it even began. The online product needs to be well designed and simple for success. The information offered offline will not work online. Remember - people spending money to market online want to see results to justify the next months/years online spend.

Having said there are many fantastic sites out there - we must make sure we do not add fancy features that are not really adding value to the brand. Online users are getting smarter and more demanding. People want ease of use. Take a look at Google - a household name - and the interface remains simple and focused. The real estate around the search box in Google must be worth millions and millions of dollars - however they have never strayed away from the sites core purpose.

In short - I think companies may jump on the internet bandwagon too hastily before having prepared what they wish to achieve by being online (sales/leads/brand awareness etc) and also before they have developed a suitable virtual store or online portal. The latter can be compared to running great TV ads sending people to a huge sale at a brick and mortar store - only to have people visit the store and the front door has a sign saying "opening soon". Driving traffic to a website can be expensive, and the destination needs to be fully functional.

I am not saying online is not a great medium, because it is a very dynamic medium that offers fantastic opportunity, I am just saying there are a few critical success factors that need to be addressed before spending money online. By not setting things up correctly from the start, companies will have a bad first experience in online marketing and thus potentially may think it is not a sustainable or profitable medium, thus putting the online medium into disrepute.

Going online is not only about budgeting for the spend - it is also about setting up a virtual face for your company/brand with the users experience in mind. No one is going to be there to ask him/her what they are looking for - the site needs to be simple, but offer enough to get them to interact. Further to this the site needs to have real people behind it - supporting it and the people that use it.

Johan Bosini

BUY BUY... SELL SELL

2006-02-14T22:55:00.000-08:00

I think we have all seen movies with traders shouting angrily to buy or sell shares, and thought that looks like fun. Well now there is a really cool, and fun, new site where you can buy and sell shares in your favorite websites. It is free too and the value of the shares are based on the ever changing ranking alexa gives to a website. Take a look at Alexadex if you like online trading at all. I found it great fun - and you get to challenge friends too. This is a great spinoff from Alexa.com

If you have some time to kill you should take a look - and test your knowledge (and insider knowledge) on what sites will jump rankings according to Alexa. The principle is just like trading real shares in real companies - and not surprisingly there are ads on the site to real online trading platforms for when you think your skills have improved in reading graphs and trends.

Johan Bosini

Need cash?

2006-02-07T23:17:00.000-08:00

About a year ago I was lent a book by my step father (which I have failed to return - sorry Noel) called The Lexus and the Olive Tree, by Thomas L. Friedman. It is a rather amazing book on how the world is changing, rapidly and ruthlessly - almost out of control. It is an amazing read - I suggest you read it if you want some interesting reading on understanding globalization.

Anyway - I recenly read about an interesting new product that further highlights how the world is changing (or should I say HAS Changed). Prosper is a great product displaying a truely free market - where the central forces are supply and demand. It is essentially a marketplace for borrowers and lenders. Borrowers state how much they want to borrow (Max $25,000) and the max interest rate they will pay. Lenders in turn then say how much they want to lend, and at what rate. Prosper steps in then and takes the lowest price lenders and groups them into a loan.

So - in the words of Thomas, "Globalization is the integration of capital, technology, and information across national borders, in a way that is creating a single global market and, to some degree, a global village."

Johan Bosini

Google Radio?

2006-01-23T23:10:00.000-08:00

On the 17th January it was announced that Google was buying dMarc Technology, a provider of automated ad delivery platforms for radio stations. dMarc connects advertisers directly to radio stations through its automated advertising platform. If you have not read the news then see here.

Now that some of the proverbial dust has settled I was wondering what traditional marketing companies are thinking... an indutry leader in online marketing and search has made the move into a traditional space. Should everyone be a little nervous? This is not the first move though to offline for Google - recently they sold some space in the Chicago Sun-Times newspaper and also some other publications. So much for sticking to your knitting!

Some see Google's move to be a strange one - however they plan to integrate their radio ad sales into Google Adwords - so online marketers will be able to run campaigns online and offline through one easy interface. A marketer can now reach users when they are online, or during drive time in their cars, as well as in the paper when they get home. Seems like a winner already.

What about TV? I think TV is a different animal. Radio and print are localized easily - thus targeting and measureability are great, and thus attractive for marketers. From all this however it yet again makes it pretty clear that no one advertising medium is best - they are complimentary and all have a place in everyones marketing mix.

Oh, I forgot - Google did not exactly get dMarc for a song though. It looks like the deal is worth US $1.14 Billion - with an upfront payment of $102 million dollars and the balance over 3 years, depending on performance... Seems Google is all about paying for performance, even when they buy things!

Johan Bosini

What makes some new web applications so hot?

2006-01-18T00:18:00.000-08:00

You know something is important and well designed when, out of the blue, a huge number of users all over the world start using it. Not because they’re told to or because their boss says so, not because the industry analysts think it’s the next hot thing, but simply because it does something they really like or need. Wikipedia is one such tool - the fruits of Jimmy Wales, the founder back in 2001. His "vision" was to create and distribute a free encyclopedia of the highest possible quality to every single person on the planet in their own language. Wiki Wiki by the way is derived from Hawaiian and means quick.

Realising the full scope of the project is difficult, but Wikipedia encompasses 119 active language editions as of March 2005, and another 100 inactive ones.

Visitors may edit Wikipedia's articles, and registered users can create new ones and have their changes instantly displayed. Wikipedia is built on the expectation that collaboration among users will improve articles over time, in much the same way that open source software develops. Further, this real-time, collaborative model allows rapid updating of existing topics and introduction of new topics.

It really is a great tool. One thing to note though - if you change or add something and someone does not agree with you... the battle begins in who is right. Your contribution will be changed pretty quickly should someone disagree with you.

Johan Bosini

A trend to follow

2006-01-13T03:59:00.000-08:00

I received an email the other day from a trusted source. It is a weekly mail all about marketing and advertising. I normally breeze over the items and see if there is something interesting, and then flag it to read later when I have more time. When I had some time I went back to it only to discover the heading was misleading, and was nothing very interesting (to me).
With this in mind, it highlighted how information, and how we receive it and digest it, is changing again.

Emails were the new communication tool, however with their convenience also comes the world wide problem of Spam. This has resulted in all sorts of "Spam Police" and also a reluctance in passing out your email address. So, with email addresses being protected like a social security number, people have managed to get the information they want through a subscription of sorts. Through blogs and news feeds we are learning the value of subscription on the internet. We used to subscribe to newspaper or magazines, now we’re subscribing to information sources that are as specialized and particular as we want them to be. These are not written by professional writers in house-hold brand publications, but by people whose passion and interest is their credibility.

The writing of people behind blogs and feeds is interesting and generally totally unbiased as they have nothing to gain in singing false praise. Now this enables us to read about very specific topics, rather than read what is simply presented to us. This trend in information will mean we as consumers will be able to manipulate and choose the information we receive, rather than be exposed to what others feel we want to be exposed to.

Johan Bosini

Blogs, RSS, tagging - what next?

2006-01-11T00:00:00.000-08:00

We all know that the web landscape has changed in the past few years. Gone are the popular days for personal sites, in are the blogs. Gone is the popularity of directories, and in steps the importance of tagging. Anyway - blogs are huge, and everyone has them. Similarly, RSS feeds are huge and have changed the way content is syndicated. What is "RSS" I hear you say - well feedburner.com explains it stands for Really Simple Syndication.

Anyway - now we know about blogs, and we know about RSS, so what next? Well the next exciting product to get tongues wagging is a tool soon to launch called Edgeio. I chatted with Keith Teare (one of the founding members) a week or two ago in Cape Town at a family function and he gave me a brief outline of what it is. You'll be able to post a classified ad to your blog, tag it, and have it circulate out.

I should have chatted to Keith more, and had less wine, but I think Edgeio is going to use structured blogging to enable the creation of classified listing sites to compete with a behemoth like "craigslist", the local newspaper classifieds, and GoogleBase. Edgeio is being beta tested as it is prepared to soon be launched.

Looks exciting. Good luck to all involved.

Johan Bosini

Making it easy is difficult.

2006-01-06T02:51:00.000-08:00

It is innovation's biggest paradox: We demand more and more from the things in our lives - more features, more speed, more power - and yet we also increasingly demand that it be easy to use.
Over the past few years companies have tried to differentiate themselves and their products by simply adding more functions to an existing item. This has resulted in products loaded with features and gadgets that only complicate our lives. Online we see companies adding additional features, making some sites so complicated to use that we spend more time sifting through the content trying to find the one thing that site is actually supposed to do. One company has got it right however, and that's Google.
In a 2002 poll, the Consumer Electronics Association discovered that 87% of people said ease of use is the most important thing when it comes to new technologies. "Engineers say, 'Do you know how much complexity we've managed to build in here?' But consumers say, 'I don't care. It's just supposed to work!' " says Daryl Plummer, group vice president at Gartner Group. Comapnies have not been listening to what their users and clients want. Until now that is. I am pretty sure the next 5 years will all be about simplicity, for all products both online and offline.

It's often that tension - between the desire to cram in cool new features and the desire to make a product easy to use - that makes delivering on the simplicity promise so hard, particularly in companies where engineers hold sway. At Google, it's an ongoing battle. Developers come up with all sorts of brilliant ideas - however the Google we all know - and love - never changes. It is simple to use offering enough, never too much. So how did it all get so complicated with most products and services? I blame a competitive landscape in which piling on new features is the easiest way to differentiate products, even if it makes them harder to use. Marketers haven't figured out a way to make "ease of use" sound hip yet. "It's easier," says Charles Golvin, principal analyst with Forrester Research, "to market technology than ease of use."

So why don't those sites and regular brick and mortar comapnies simply hit the "delete" button and make their home pages and comapnies more Googlesque? Today companies have too many cooks. In this I mean that there are too many stake holders who are in charge of some part of the machine of a business, but their goals and objectives clash in some way or another. The truth though is that people want products to be simple, and decision makers should listen to their users.

Simplicity is both sacred and central to competitive advantage for comapnies like google. This is just another reason I love google so much. They also have allowed for people to choose what content they wish to see with a nifty site at www.google.com/ig. Microsoft is hot on their heels too with a funky customisable desktop style web platform called START. See www.start.com where you can have all sorts of RSS feeds and email and and and. Hold on, we are getting complicated already...

But the issue is also our conflicted relationship with technology. We want the veneer of simplicity but with all the bells and whistles modern technology can provide. I guess noone said it would be easy for companies to please a world where the cost of comaparison has been reduced to zero with the internet. Never before has the world been in such a strong position to be informed about almost everything. Ignorance is no longer an excuse in first world countries.

Johan Bosini

Click here now - it's FREE!

2006-01-05T02:31:00.000-08:00

There are many powerfull words in the English language. Some have fantastic pronounciations, and facinating meanings. Of all these amazing words to choose from to entice would-be customers it is rather unreal that most advertisers online choose the boring word "free". It must be the most popular word online to attract attention. "Click here now, it's FREE". People love free things. Anyway - with the hype about Skype there are some competitors coming through now - one of them being http://www.voipstunt.com - silly name I know. These guys are like skype - but calls to landlines are, you guessed it, FREE. I have no idea how they get around the breakout charges, but they do. Normally if it sounds too good to be true, it is, however with this free service it really does not cost you anything at all. So where is the catch? Is there spyware in the software download? Are they going to sell my email address to a million online casinos? So far I have had nothing but a great FREE service to call friends and family all over the world.

The only downside about these guys is the fact that there is no chat/instant message function.

So the question is this, how long for Skype to start offering free calls to landlines too?
Johan Bosini

Does Google have an Achilles Heel?

2006-01-03T06:44:00.000-08:00

I love Google. I like the simple design, the fast search times, the added value services and pretty much everything they touch. Google Earth is amazing. Their GMail is unreal, and their adwords and adsense just fantastic. So do they have an Achilles heel? Well perhaps they do. The way the internet and its applications change all they need to do is become complacent and someone else may grab enough market share to either make Google buy them, or see Google become number 2...

Unlikely I know, but check out guys like Clipfire, it is a new generation of search where it is community-powered, thus making it very powerful as it is made up of peoples thoughts and experiences with products, services and brands. It is however only focused on e-commerce... but the concept is fantastic. It allows users to submit ecommerce deals, and other members can vote the best deals to the top of the site, and add appropriate metadata, like tags, to the links. It’s a young site and not a lot of users are there yet. But founder Kevin Carey has a big trick up his sleave - not only does he allow users to submit links with affiliate codes, he absolutely encourages it. So users have a big incentive to push and suggest great deals on the site…and they can make real money doing so.

So is Google in trouble? Never. Google heel? About as likely as a unicorn.

Do you speak internet?

2006-01-03T06:19:00.000-08:00

The world is said to be getting smaller. This is not only due to travel being faster, cheaper and more frequent - but also due to language being less of a problem. Take a look at http://ajax.parish.ath.cx/translator/

It’s an on-the-fly Ajax application that creates real-time translations between English, Spanish, German, Italian, Portuguese and French. Very slick.

Ajax Translator, like Babel Fish, is useful for crude communication that translates one word at a time or that has the same grammatical structure in both language, but it does not allow for grammatical inconsistencies. For more complicated communications the back end quickly falls behind.

The front end is cool though.

Holidays are here- wink anyone?

2005-12-22T06:09:00.000-08:00

So the holidays are upon us. I wonder why I am even in the office today, as it seems everyone is on Holiday already. If it were possible, I wonder how much money is wasted over this period in offices staying open, paying employees to hand around and plan their holiday...

Anyways, Wink recently launched. See below.

The Wink user-enhanced search engine, in private beta for the last few months, launches Thursday morning to the world.

Wink is, at its core, a combination of traditional search with feature-rich social bookmarking. Bookmarked/tagged results appear above normal search.

Search results can be bookmarked, tagged and rated from Wink. The same functionality is available via a bookmarklet that works with Firefox, Safari and IE. As a twist, users can also block “bad” pages. Lots of functional Ajax is built into the interface.

Users can easily browse tag results (either their own, or all users).

There are three key additional features.

First, Wink has added two way synchronization with del.icio.us bookmarks. And they’ve added a “Keep Sync’d” feature that, as the name implies, maintains a constant one or two-way syncronization with del.icio.us. No word on whether they will add in other social bookmarking services over time or not.

Second, Wink allows the creation of “collections”, which is a tag group (tags of tags). Collections are controlled by one user but can be shared with anyone.

Third, and this feature really appeals to me, Wink has added a “Wink Answers” tab to search results. The text is a wiki - meaning anyone can edit it. For queries that have complicated results, a number of options appear. A lot of data has been pre-populated, and I believe this will be a popular feature. Like Wikipedia, it begs for user interaction, but with a lower intimidation factor.

Wink is also finalizing a nice blog widget that includes additional links (that point only to bookmarks created by the blogger). See here for an example. I have not had the opportunity to test this myself yet, but it looks interesting.

Congratulations to Founder Michael Tanne and the entire Wink team.

So what is Affiliate Marketing?

2005-12-14T22:10:00.000-08:00

Below is a project I have been working on, and it is finally up and running.

Growthonline Solutions, an international online solutions company, is proud to announce the launch of its EarningsOnline.co.za affiliate network program in South Africa. EarningsOnline.co.za currently has 16 merchants on the program with more signing up on an ongoing basis.

EarningsOnline is a true "pay for performance" affiliate model whereby both merchants and affiliates sign up for free and remuneration is based on sales generated.

EarningsOnline offers key marketing and revenue generating benefits to both merchants and affiliates and these are:

For merchants/advertisers:

1. There is little risk to the merchant in that no lead/sale = no remuneration
2. Merchants' sign up to the program for free.
3. Affiliate marketing offers merchants a local/global sales force creating exposure for their brand.
4. No upfront costs, no monthly management fees.
5. The program is entirely managed by GrowthOnline Solutions and its EarningsOnline program - no need for additional in-house resources, etc.
6. EarningsOnline offers the merchant an additional sales channel and the ability to measure success in terms of campaigns/offers

For Affiliates/webmasters:

1. Many webmasters do not know that they can generate real and additional income from their sites and existing/surplus traffic.
2. Joining is absolutely free - some webmasters are under the perception that it costs them to join affiliate programs.
3. The EarningsOnline network offers a growing and diverse stable of reputable brands - provides real choice to affiliates rather than one merchant offering.
4. We have a team of experienced Affiliate Marketing Managers, with 10 years of international experience, keen to assist.
5. It offers added credibility for webmasters sites due to association with leading Merchant brands.
6. There is the additional benefit of getting a lifetime commission for referring other Affiliates - EarningsOnline offers affiliates a two-tier structure.
7. Access to stats 24/7
8. Monthly payments via EFT

Although it is early days in South Africa, the affiliate marketing concept is absolutely booming in Europe, UK and the USA where 35% of all online retail sales are through affiliate programs.

Now is the time to get on board the program and start to experience the power of an affiliate network program.

http://www.earningsonline.co.za

Editorial contact
EarningsOnline.co.za
Johan Bosini
+27 (21) 790 8061

From time to time

2005-12-14T09:33:00.000-08:00

Every now and then we have one of those moments where we remember just how lucky we are. Just how lucky we are every day. We thank who ever we believe in as a higher being for the things we have, the people who love us, the people we love and also the material comforts we have. The strange part is that it takes seeing someone who does not have these things for us to take cogniscense of the fact that we really are lucky.

When someone dies suddenly then we are thankfull to be alive. When there is someone in the cold, we are thankful to be warm. So imagine we were all warm all of the time - would we still be thankful?

The same goes for the internet. Complacency sets in like an undetected virus. Before long you are moaning that your ADSL is too slow - you NEED cable. Humans will never be happy really. Goal posts shift, ideals change, our nature always stays the same.

Connectedness

2005-12-13T23:33:00.000-08:00

The escapades of onassis are stories observed day to day by myself in my environment. A passive view on life and what we go through and endure on a daily basis in marketing and product design. Exciting? Probably not. Entertaining? Naa. Boring? Depends who is asking.

Never before have brands, companies and services had to compete with so many others for individuals attention. So what makes you click here, click there, buy this or that, dial that number or drink that brand? Well, If anyone really had those answers there would be very little competition out there.