technoballs » digg

Digg Lights the Way

the ballmaster — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 15:48:19 +0000

Earlier this year, Digg began experimenting with advertisements that would appear in the stream of user-added stories. Users could digg these ads up or down, giving advertisers instant feedback about the quality and saliency of their ads:

“…advertisements that get more “diggs,” or votes, get a lower cost-per-click rate for the ad, and the ad is likely to stay visible on the site longer. If users veto the ad, also known as “burying” it, the cost-per-click rate will go up and the advertiser will be more likely to remove the ad from the site.

“In a way, its beneficial for the advertisers to figure out what does and doesn’t work,” Mr. Maser said. “Digg is the world’s largest focus group.”

Is this the future of advertising– in-stream placement subject to community approval? If so, it represents a novel approach. Relevance gets rewarded, and overly-broad ads get punished (and ultimately removed.)

via Digg’s Vote-for-Ads Experiment Is Raising Revenue – Bits Blog – NYTimes.com.

Rediscovering Customer Retention

the ballmaster — Sat, 26 Sep 2009 15:48:41 +0000

A new report by Unisfair highlights the top marketing goals for 2010. Among them? Customer retention:

Six in 10 marketers polled said acquiring new customers would be critical in 2010, while 48% would focus on retaining current customers—a particularly important effort in the recession.

Marketers also pointed to the need to engage users in social networks as a means of engagement:

Unisfair suggested that virtual communities to engage both current and future customers would help accomplish both these major goals.

So far, so good– pretty standard stuff. Things get interesting, however, when marketers report about which online communities are the most effective in adding value.

The winner?

LinkedIn.

It would be fascinating to dig more deeply into these numbers to determine which LinkedIn features are most favored by marketers– groups? Company profiles? Discussions? I wonder how much of Digg’s current malaise is connected to marketers’ perceptions of its relative lack of value.

via Customer Acquisition and Retention Top Priorities – eMarketer.

Google Reader Gets Social. Unless You’re Wordpress. (In Which Case, You’re SOL.)

the ballmaster — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 03:12:17 +0000

On Wednesday, Google announced it is now making it easier to share news stories from Google Reader to a host of social networking platforms. Facebook, Twitter, Digg, and other options are now accessible via a user setting:

Just select the platforms where you want your shared items to go, and you’re all set. Sharing news stories remains an under-appreciated activity on social networks like Facebook and Twitter, one that often spurs meaningful discourse around important events. (OK, and celebrity tabloid-fare as well.)

This is an interesting move for Google, considering it incorporated its own private Share feature in 2008. Items shared using this feature were visible to others within your iGoogle community. By adding the platforms above, Google seems to be acknowledging that it needs cross-platform share compatibility in order for Google Reader to remain relevant.

See anything missing from the list above? Try Wordpress. Google purchased Blogger in 2003, and has a stake in providing the service with as many competitive advantages over Wordpress as possible.

Even with the omission, the incorporation of these services is a major step forward for Google Reader, which I consider the best, easiest-to-use RSS reader available.

via Official Google Reader Blog: A flurry of features for feed readers.