Year: 2007

LinkedIn opens up for all

Lucian Beebe may go down in history as one of the people responsible for a major shift in the way people do business. Who is he, you ask? Well, he is in charge of product management at LinkedIn, the business social network. And how does that make him so important?

A new way to make money online

Entrepreneurs are always seeking new ways of making money online. But sometimes it is more simple than you think. Take, for instance, making money from the media. For years newspapers and magazines have paid large amounts of cash for “exclusive” photographs. Yonks ago I made my own mini fortune from

Big business fails to understand blogging

Big business is notorious for failing to either understand the Internet or to use it effectively. Indeed, the vast majority of large corporations have web sites which have cost them tens of thousands but which have no impact on their income. In other words, for most businesses, the Internet actually

Web 2.0? Most businesses haven’t even caught up with Web 1.0 yet..!

Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia, was in London earlier this week speaking about the benefits of Web 2.0 for businesses. He’d highlighted what he was going to say in an interview last month with Computing magazine. However, in spite of his enthusiastic support for Web 2.0 and online collaboration,

Medical research reveals something about Internet marketing

Doctors either have a “bedside manner” or they don’t. I remember being told about a top cancer specialist who could not engage with patients, so merely used to tap them on their foot as they lay dying in their bed, look the other way and say “soon be OK old

Online Business

New report reveals the secret of online success

Every once in a while a report comes your way that makes you wish you had written it yourself. A new report from Paul Smithson, the founder of the XSite Pro web design program is one such document. The report is the first in the “Real Reason” series and focuses

Internet criminals are going to have a field day

Internet criminals must be rubbing their hands in glee. Not only does the British Government lose the bank account details of 10 million families, but now it seems they are making the local bobby the person who should investigate Internet crime. Pardon, did I say that correctly? Yes, that’s right

Domain names are really important – but companies don’t seem bothered about them

People often swap web site names between each other. They tell them to their friends, neighbours, colleagues and so on. Think how difficult it would have been for Google if their web site name (domain) had been something like “www.automatedsearchenginesystemnotrelyingonhumaneditors.com”. And what about people who try to recommend web sites

Blogging prediction was almost true

Back in January I suggested that the blogging company Six Apart was going to be sold. A representative of the company soon contacted me and told me that I shouldn’t read too much in the reports I’d read and added a comment to my blog entry. However, today I read

Oh dear – Britain is going to lag behind online

Experts frequently fail to get things right. History is littered with so-called experts who predicted things totally incorrectly. The boss of IBM famously said there would only ever be a need for a handful of computers. Ha..! So, why should we believe the “experts” at Ofcom and BT who tell

Email

Forget email – it’s old hat

Old people – that is those aged over 19 – use email frequently. But teenagers hardly every use it; instead they are into instant messaging, big time. Although there is a marginal increase in email usage amongst teenagers, the vast majority still prefer instant messaging. Indeed, a week or two

Internet marketers focus on the wrong things – again..!

Marketers always seem to be reinventing the wheel; no sooner do they come up with a “great new concept” than they ditch it in favour of some “good old fashioned” marketing. Perhaps it’s just me – but I reckon marketing is pretty simple and straightforward stuff; it’s marketers who appear

Social networking has “made it”

You know when you have “made it” when you are front page news – particularly if that front page belongs to the Wall Street Journal. Facebook is the subject of a major article on the front of the Wall Street Journal, arguing that perhaps we can let other social networkers

CNN, YouTube and the American People

I am sitting in my hotel room in the USA watching a fascinating CNN program which is a “debate” between the Republican leadership hopefuls. What is interesting is not what they are saying – usual political flim-flam that doesn’t really answer the questions. Rather, the interesting bit is what is

Create an “Internet Marketing Kit”

Most people don’t use Internet technology well. Fewer than 2% of people who access the web, for instance, actually subscribe to RSS feeds. In spite of environmental concerns, millions of emails and web pages are actually printed out, rather than read on screen. As for using social networking tools, or

Internet marketing gets even more mobile

A lucky 500 Londoners have started taking part in a trial using Nokia phones to pay for tube journeys. Essentially, the phones use similar technology to the widespread “Oyster card” that many people in London use to pay their underground fares. Barclaycard is launching a similar card that will pay

Blogging can help your soul

Still, in spite of being around for ten years, people dismiss blogging as futile, unecessary or in some way “amateur”. Far from it – some of the most successful web sites in the world are based on blog technology. Amazon, the BBC and Facebook are all derivatives of blogging. But

Where do blogs come from?

Bloggers often find it hard to locate information to write about. Indeed, at blogging workshops I run, people often say they run out of ideas for their blogs. Well, if newspapers ran out of ideas they’d soon lose money…! So, where do newspapers get their ideas from? Other media –