hopefully relevant commentary

What an effin loser this guy is

Social Media Club was last night and a bunch of Phoenix tweeps showed up.  Help me out because I couldn’t get the spelling right on a few of them, or if I missed any make sure they go in the comments.  There’s a good write up about it at the Social Media Club Phoenix website.  Good times.

donmockjr / swedler / williamsmith / brianshaler / blogster  / sheilabocchine / azpunster / ciaoenrico / daveshap / jmoriarty / defactor  / ronbellaz / thoughtlava / jcookaz / halfacat / zerohourbob / katsacks / chasers / chuckreynolds / edaz / jamesarcher / jeremyvaught / justincrossman / wurkit  / mikecorak / hardaway / tysoncrosbie / msherr

This post was inspired by Hooman Radfar, founder of Clearspring and is long over due.  He notes how widgets can be a great way to protect against user abandonment.  The Internet makes adoption extremely easy.  However, with easy adoption comes easy abandonment.  In his post, Hooman recognizes that widgets can play a role in protecting against websites users going elsewhere on the net.

The fickle nature of users is a great reason for publishers and advertisers to establish effective syndication strategies. By syndicating content and services via channels such as widgets, they can reach their audiences - wherever they may be.

When I read that a light went on. With retargeting you literally are everywhere your audience is. So, how can we measure this? Not only is retargeting great for generating traffic and conversions, but there’s a lot more value to be had. Most of the people I talk to are solely focused on this. But it’s interesting when my clients are seeing benefits across the board. Retargeting helps boost pageviews per user, time-on-site, avg. order value, traffic from search, etc. Just about every engagement metric increases dramatically after we go live with a client and it’s not coincidence. Too often is this industry focused on the click.

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This just spells P-I-M-P.

Google is auto opting people into it’s analytics data sharing program?  Not sure I like that so much.

I recently got a Netflix account.  I love the service so far, and the recommendations seem to be pretty good.  The Netflix Prize is really cool.  I was really interested when I saw the “Friends and Community” section.  It looks like Netflix is making a half baked attempt at a social network, it’s especially half-baked when you click on “Community Forms” which takes you to the Ning Netflix page.  When I first looked at the “Friends & Community” tab I thought it was pretty cool, except for the fact that I had no idea if I knew anyone who actually used Netflix … come on!  The first time I actually wanted to use one of those Gmail inspecting friend finder/spammer tools they didn’t have one.  Then … after a few weeks I finally ran into a buddy who uses it … I went to add him, and I couldn’t even find him!!!!  I entered his email address into this even more spammy looking page, hoping it would return something useful, but nothing.  I have no idea if the email address I used for him is registered in the Netflix database.  What the eff … I’m sure the web strategist would have something to say about this.  My battery is dying … out.

This flow chart should help you figure it out.

via James Archer

Frozen Grand Central from ImprovEverywhere on Vimeo.

I’m an avid user of Google Maps on my Blackberry.  It’s completely replaced 411 and it helps me get direction when I’m on the road.  With the last update Google added the ability to calculate my approximate location based on cell tower locations.  I love this feature because it shortens the amount of clicks to get driving directions.  What would be great, though, is if Google Maps could show you the locations of your friends.  Integrate it like they did with Google Reader.  The people on your Google Talk list would automatically show up on Google Maps in the browser and on your phone.  If a friend didn’t use Google Maps for a mobile device, then their location could be approximated via their IP.  How cool would that be!?