Posts tagged Decisions
New Reuters Site Turns News Decisions Over To Social Media
Feb 2nd
News agency Reuters launched a Social Pulse, which it describes as a “social media hub” that will display “the most talked-about news, companies and influencers across the Web.”
The site is unique in the news-curating space in that it uses trends from the Twitter accounts Reuters and its journalists follow to arrange headlines: in effect, the news agency is automating editing and story selection and putting it in the hands of “everyone from Nouriel Roubini and Jenna Wortham to John McCain and Rachel Sterne.”
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Social Pulse has a business bent – one key section is where Reuters has posted with Klout to track what the “50 most social CEOs” are reading and commenting on. Other features include WiseWindow, a stock sentiment model for companies, showing whether social media sentiment is leaning toward favorable or unfavorable opinions, according to a blog post announcing the new site.
News organizations have increasingly warmed toward social media in the past several years. New York Times reporters like Brian Stelter and David Carr routinely tweet about stories they are covering and offer commentary to reactions about their reporting. Small and large outlets have used live-tweeted breaking news events and press conferences.
But the Reuters effort appears to be a major step forward in using social media to shape the news cycle. Presumably, story selection for the main news page will remain in the hands of Reuters editors.
The difference between that page and Social Pulse earlier this morning show that what Reuters editors think is important (Facebook IPO, Jobless Claims Fall and a story about the Federal Reserve, among others) is not necessarily in line with what’s getting traffic on Social Pulse, which was topped by a story about a drop in Iranian currency, an increase in planned layoffs last month and a feature on Swiss watch sales.
Of the three articles at the top of Social Pulse, only one – the story about layoffs – was a Reuters story.
View full post on ReadWriteWeb
Hosting Decisions by YCombinator Companies in 2011
Jan 20th
Ever wonder what other companies are choosing for hosting, Email, DNS, etc.? As it happens, there’s an app for that (so to speak) and someone put the Y Combinator companies under the microscope. With 248 companies examined, you get some pretty interesting results. If Y Combinator companies are the future, Google is looking really good for email hosting, and Amazon is doing really well for Web Hosting.
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One of the surprises, for me at least, was the fact that even after all the SOPA protests more than half of the companies, 130, are still using Go Daddy. The second closest registrar is eNom, with 39, followed by 1 and 1, and Gandi. Actually "Other" comes in higher than Go Daddy.
More interesting to me is email and Web hosting. Nearly 90 companies are using Amazon for hosting, followed by Rackspace with 36 of the companies.
Email? Google takes the lion’s share here, with the majority of companies using its email. "Other" comes in second, along with self-hosted. What it doesn’t say, of course, is whether the users are paying for Google’s Apps or just using the free version.
The information was gathered using a tool called domain-profiler, and last updated on January 17th. It’s written in Ruby by Joël Franusic, and available under the MIT License on GitHub.
View full post on ReadWriteWeb
New Google Webmaster Tools Notification for Cross-Domain URL Decisions
Nov 2nd
A post on Google’s Webmaster Central Blog offers information on preventing cross-domain URL issues and announces a new notifications feature for webmasters. If their algorithms choose to index a URL outside of your site, they will attempt to…
View full post on Search Engine Watch – Latest
WordPress & CMS Design Decisions For Multinational Search
Oct 11th
We’ve seen a number of queries on the suitability of various platforms for SEO, so I’ve pulled together some pointers that may prove useful when choosing a commonly available, free, website platform for a site that will — either immediately or at a later date — be expected to deliver an…
Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.
View full post on Search Engine Land: News & Info About SEO, PPC, SEM, Search Engines & Search Marketing
IT Purchasing Decisions Are Not Made Over Social Networks, Forrester Says
Jul 26th
Despite all the attention that social networks like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn get as a way for marketers to expand their reach, technology buyers are not using them as primary sources of sources of purchase information, reports research firm Forrester. Print publications and company websites still far outweigh social media when it comes to informing IT buyers and it looks like that is not going to change anytime soon.
It is easy to use a Facebook page or a Twitter account to expand a brand’s reach. Set it up and start posting and the marketing department hits its “reach” quotient for the quarter. Yet, for business-to-business (B2B) technology suppliers get little value from their social media initiatives. Hence, Forrester recommends businesses augment their social media strategies to become more effective sources of information for making technology-purchasing decisions.
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As far as influence, Facebook is key to the decision-making process of 13% of businesses analysts and 11% of IT infrastructure operators. LinkedIn does significantly better in this category, with 26% of business analysts but still only 11% of IT operators (perhaps be the same group of IT employees). For Twitter, the numbers are 8% and 4% between analysts and IT, respectively.
For the time sink that social media can be, those are not great numbers for marketers looking to expand brand awareness. The top sources of influence for decision-makers were websites followed by word-of-mouth from colleagues and then in-person events like trade shows or conferences all. Part of this has to do with the nature of enterprise buying – it is a market ecosystem that does not change quickly. Buyers tend to use the sources they trust and often those sources are going to be other people they know and can physically interact with. Think of it like this: you ask your colleague how he/she solved problem “X.” Colleague says they used “X” product. What do you then do? Turn to the Web and look up that companies Facebook page or go to the company’s website?
For smaller consumer businesses, Facebook and Twitter can be great ways to increase engagement and hence foot traffic to brick-and-mortar locations. It is cheap and potentially viral. Enterprises are insulated from the viral nature of the social Web because the vetting process of technology decisions lasts longer than the typical Internet meme.
Forrester recommends and integrated approach. Instead of a stand-alone social marketing channel that screams into the Internet ether, tie it up with product and field marketing of the brand. It is a more cooperative and resource-intensive approach, but the results should be greater than setting up camp on Facebook with an “open for business” shingle on the door.
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Paper Industry Ablaze In Australia Over Google Ad Decisions
Jan 31st
A civil liberties group in Australia is criticizing Google’s decision to pull ads by the Wilderness Society that brought attention to “a boycott against a paper manufacturer that uses wood sourced from Australian old growth forests,” the Sydney Morning Herald reported.
The company to be boycotted – Australian Paper – contacted Google and the ads were pulled as they used brand names in their ad copy. “Google removed the ads saying that because the society did not own the trademark for the popular paper brand, Reflex, it could not use the name in its ads.”
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