Business
Tracking Twitter – Directory of Brands on Twitter
Friday, March 6th, 2009 | Business, Marketing, Mashup, Tools, Twitter, WebApps | No Comments
Brand management firm ElectricArtists just recently launched Trackingtwitter, a site that tracks media, entertainment and consumer product accounts on the microblogging site.
Trackingtwitter follows Zappos, Whole Foods, Starbucks, Jet Blue and Comcast, among others. It broadcasts the brand category (“sports,” “television,” etc.), the Twitter usernames, number of followers, most recent tweet and any personal notes they may have collected about the account.
eBay Holiday Giveaway Thwarted By Automated Script
Thursday, December 4th, 2008 | Business, eBay, Hack, News, Promotion | No Comments
Apparently eBay’s in trouble for their recent $1 Holiday Doorbusters Giveaway, where they ‘randomly’ give out 100 gifts ranging from GPS devices, jewelry and even a new Chevrolet Corvette for only $1 (with a new item given away each day). The catch? eBay isn’t going to tell you what item is being given away each day or even what category it’ll be in….a plan that apparently was full of holes.
The contest was brought down to a screeching halt on Tuesday when hundreds of users began using automated scripts that would continuously bid on items for $1 in an attempt to secure the winning bid even before the actual auction page goes public. This then resulted in a large crowd of the more ‘honest’ users becoming furious at eBay for letting these rogue ‘script kiddies’ get away with cheating the system….evidence of which can be found throughout the eBay public forums.
The script in question is right now all over the internet. You can find it for sale on RentACoder for $20 or even for free in various forums.
Poor eBay.
.Tel Domain Names Now On Sale
Wednesday, December 3rd, 2008 | Business, New Beginnings, News | No Comments
Starting today you can purchase your very own .tel domain name. Regulated through Telnic, you’re forced to submit your contact information through their forms in order to submit a request to purchase a desired domain. The opening up of this TLD will be held in three phases.
The current ‘Sunrise’ phase only allows for trademark holders to register their .tel domain name (and they have to pay a pretty penny to secure it – ), the rest of us will have to wait until the ‘Landrush’ phase which begins on February 3, 2009. It will then be opened up to the public on March 24, 2009.
This TLD brings a whole new slew of potential vanity domain names to mind so it should be interesting to see what comes out of it. I can only imagine how valuable names like ‘cantyou.tel’ will go for on the auction block come March.
The downside to this new offering is the limited usage that is permitted by Telnic. Right now you can’t even upload your own company logo to be used on the domain purchased and according to their website, its primary purpose is to act as some sort of global address/phone-book. Also, the pricing for the general public release looks like it’ll be close to $20 for a one-year contract – far more expensive than your typical .com or .net domain.
Amazon Plays Catch-up And Buys Video Game Producer Reflexive
Tuesday, October 21st, 2008 | Business, Games, Marketing, News | No Comments
Following in Google’s footsteps, Amazon just announced today that they have acquired Orange County based video game company Reflexive for an undisclosed sum (translation: a whole lot of dough). Does this mean we might see a new player in the online advertising market? Is Amazon going to make a move to try and compete with Google for contextual ads? With million of Amazon stores & affiliates out there, could a new CPC offering be right around the corner? I sure hope so.
Founded in 1997, Reflexive has produced fifteen games for the Xbox 360, PC and Mac not to mention offers flash based games through their Reflexive Arcade website. In 2005 the company won 3 awards at the 2005 Independent Games Festival for Fable of Souls and Wik.
Quoting the company founder Lars Brubaker in an article taken from the Reflexive website:
It means we’ll be able to expand our distribution network to include Amazon’s amazing distribution channel. With Amazon we will bring a huge new group of customers into play
Should be interesting to see what happens next.
Just Released: Google AdSense for Online Gaming
Wednesday, October 8th, 2008 | Beta, Business, Games, google, Marketing, News | No Comments
Google just announced the release of Google AdSense for Online Gaming. It works pretty much the same as your pre-existing AdSense program, where you place video, image or text ads within your application/game and it displays contextually targeted advertising based on the surrounding content.
From the official Google AdSense blog:
You’ll be able to show these ads in placements you define, such as interstitial frames before a game, after a level change, or when a game is over. Members of our AdWords team will sell your in-game ad placements directly to top brand advertisers, and you’ll also see contextually targeted text and image ads based on content and demographic information.
Now if you’re a budding flash developer, don’t go getting your hopes up just yet – in order to be eligible for this beta program your games must have a minimum of 500,000 “game plays” with at least 80% of the traffic originating from the US or UK. If you fit the mold, here’s a direct link to the application.
So far there are only three marketers listed as partners on the info page: Sprint, Sony Pictures and esurance. I’m sure it won’t be long before that list starts to grow, the publisher round-up is already full of major players in the online game realm: ArcadeTown, Konami, Armor Games, Boonty, Demand Media, Heavy Games, Grab.com, Mochimedia and cafe.com.
This move was inevitable for Google seeing how they recently acquired Adscape Media, a small in-game advertising startup based out of the San Francisco, CA area.
Surprisingly, they already have a “Success Story” listed on the about page for social networking game developer Playfish. These guys primarily produce games that you can add to your Facebook or MySpace profile, so it’s a ‘little’ deceiving in nature.
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