Community Space to Boom, Blogs to Die, Domains Redo Colorful
Inventions
Peter Sauer calls himself an entrepreneur. The Grand Valley State University student devised a way to earn money online in order to pay his college expenses. Sauer created a promotional website named www.OneYearForSale.com, which offers one year’s worth of web time at the price of $1 per minute. Buyers can display their message on the site’s home page for as many minutes as they want. At press time there were three takers so far.
The 19-year-old sophomore business major came up with the idea after having spent summer 2006 painting homes for hourly cash, which was too hard. “Time is money,” Sauer said, “so why not sell it?”
Buyers purchase as many minutes as desired and create a display message, which is then shown for each minute purchased. Sauer determined the service promotes a business at an affordable ad rate, could wish a love 'Happy Birthday' or promoting oneself to potential employers.
Domain news magazine launches
If following domain news is your cup-o-tea, domainersmagazine.com debuted to "fill a void that has existed for some time in the domain name industry."
The domainersmagazine.com owners will also publish a bimonthly Domainer’s Magazine featuring articles designed to help Domainers ranging in expertise from novice to seasoned pro. Its goal is to create a publication that becomes the eyes and ears of the "Domainer."
The magazine will focus on the value of Pay Per Click Management, SEO, Domain Legal Expertise, Domain acquisition and Selling, Domain monetization and any other topics that focus on emerging technologies and services that provides value to Domainers. They will also have reoccurring articles such as:
New Yorkers have new job website
Sauer maybe the next Wall Street rising star, but for those New York professionals who cannot make ends meet on $100,000 per year there is a new job website claiming to access 4 million jobs online.
"Launched just in time to fulfill New Yorkers’ New Year’s resolutions, newyorkjoblynx.com provides instant access to as many as 4.2 million jobs through an easily navigable site listing professions ranging from airline jobs to veterans’ resources," the company claims.
Mark Neiman, a media marketing professional who created newyorkjoblynx.com, said “Making it in New York is a time-honored American dream. But catching that necessary break has never been more difficult. Our site is all-New York -– we cut through the nonsense and give ambitious New Yorkers the targeted resources they need.”
Neiman added that the $99 fee is refunded "if candidates do not find a suitable job in" 90 days.
Finding a tech jobs may have gotten a little easier heading into 2007 as Jupitermedia Corporation acquired JustTechJobs.com for an undisclosed sum.
JustTechJobs.com offers a collection of vertically focused technology job websites.
“We are excited to have acquired JustTechJobs and its rich history of serving the enterprise job market,” said Alan Meckler, CEO of Jupitermedia Corporation. “Our online media division attracts over 15 million IT professionals every month and amongst this group are thousands of job seekers and recruiters. Tech is booming and we believe that the combination of our readership with a tech job board is a natural adjunct business for our online media division.”
It is the salary not the skill
As the online job hunt drives competition across so many websites promising jobs in excess of $100,000 per year, TheLadders.com re-branded and relaunched its service for high earning careers. The new look embraces a high-end, clean design and is the result of a re-branding initiative based on a nationwide series of interviews with over 2,800 job seekers using TheLadders.com.
“People decide whether to stick around on a website in a fraction of a second, so it’s critical that we connect instantly with people who are new to the site. At the same time, it’s important that the site feel familiar to our existing members and reinforce the fact that we are a high-end brand,” said Marc Cenedella, CEO of TheLadders.com.
TheLadders.com was called the largest specialty website in the Job Resources category by comScore Networks. The company’s growth has been largely attributed to its laser focus on the high-end job market and its ability to quickly match qualified candidates with the country’s top recruiters.
Specific changes to the site included an increased emphasis on the number of jobs posted each week, featured logos of the employers posting jobs each week, and more streamlined access to job listings in twelve different categories, including sales, marketing, finance, and operations.
Do it the IBM way and make YouTubers laugh
The Internet has changed how consumers in the United States gather information -- mainly if info is not online it doesn't exist. But in a new study by Foghound of Marblehead, MA, there are now 10 marketing trends to watch in 2007. Serious news and information no longer cuts-it... keep marketing light, fluffy, and comedic, or stay home.
Private brands are joining the social networking foray to give marketing departments a way in which to connect with consumers to sell products in an open way.
News in the United States is now public relations -- Foghound calls the trend “Jon Stewartizing” after comedian Jon Stewart’s “Daily Show” (which makes fun of news rather than reports news.)
"Look for more companies to Jon Stewartize their web content, sales meetings, PR programs, similar to what IBM did when it released its hilarious fake mainframe sales training videos on YouTube," Foghound concluded. In October IBM in Somers, NY, produced a fake video on mainframes to share with youtubers.
Marketing gurus are mixing and matching content online to spread the brand across multiple sources including online radio, file sharing websites, and Flickr.
"Service innovation firms, like Peer Insight, will become more influential than product innovation specialists," Foghound concluded. Business intelligence, while valuable, has been confined to analyzing structured data. New technologies that can analyze unstructured data – like call center notes, blog postings, email exchanges – opens up valuable new insights, making it easier to pinpoint opinion leaders, categorize emerging issues and assess attitudes and sentiments towards brands and companies. Keep an eye on this new breed of BI companies like ClaraBridge.
Thankfully there is good news -- the blogging world is going down a long road of suicide. "More people will tire of reading so many blogs, and will narrow down their daily reading and posting. In fact, The Gallup Poll recently signaled the turn, reporting that blog readership slowed down in 2006 after five years of strong growth," Foghound stated.
Geeks will become a little 'cooler' in the eyes of marketing and be sought after for advice. Web 2.0 mania over digital marketing and communications goes into over-drive with shades of dot.com hype all over again, including the good, the bad and the ugly. Social networking, blogs, communities become more relevant and valuable, but beware that they’re not for every business.
Face-to-face meetings are coming back in vogue, so expect you might be traveling to conferences in 2007 rather than webcam with your team. Interactive departments go away, folding into mainstream marketing, as marketers now see “e” as core to marketing and not “new media and marketing.”
The success of YouTube and MySpace are telling signs, Foghound reported and remain the flavor of choice for 2007. Community websites enable "Meaning making vs. promoting, point of views vs. messaging, teach me vs. tell me, more companies are changing their style – talking more about ideas and less about themselves -- and getting thumbs up from customers," Foghound suggested.
Podcasts are exploding, providing a better way to download a broadcast or listen to it when you want. More than half the users say they’re more likely to consume thought leadership via a podcast.
Consumer generated media exploded in 2006, and analysis services from companies like Cymfony, and Nielsen/BuzzCompanies grew considerably, indicating that companies are investing more around listening to customer conversations. Yet in talking with many big name companies Foghound found that there’s more monitoring on what’s being said than real listening.
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