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October 2005

Sunday, October 30, 2005

links for 2005-10-30

Posted by Chip Griffin on Sunday, October 30, 2005 | | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Thursday, October 27, 2005

links for 2005-10-27

Posted by Chip Griffin on Thursday, October 27, 2005 | | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Friday, October 21, 2005

Cough of Mouth Marketing

Cough-drop maker Ricola has come up with a creative way to market its product -- the Mystery Cougher contest.  I heard it on the radio on the way in to work and checked it out online. 

The gist is that if you offer a Ricola to someone coughing in public and that turns out to be the Mystery Cougher, you could win up to $1 million.  With cold and cough season upon us, its an ingenious way to spur word of mouth marketing. 

There's an online component, as you can sign up for clues via email as to where the Mystery Cougher may go next.  And you can use a tell a friend link to spread the word electronically about the contest.

It will be interesting to see if they are able to get traction with the idea. 

Posted by Chip Griffin on Friday, October 21, 2005 | | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Tuesday, October 18, 2005

links for 2005-10-18

Posted by Chip Griffin on Tuesday, October 18, 2005 | | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Monday, October 17, 2005

Techdirt Claims Solution to Information Overload

A new product from Techdirt claims it will help alleviate the problem of "too much information" that so many of us experience.  It is targeted at the corporate market and blends technology with human analysis.  I especially liked the first sentence of the description posted in their blog:

The new service, Techdirt InfoAdvisor, takes the concept of a financial advisor and applies it to corporate information needs. Techdirt's analysts not only craft a custom internal blog of important information and analysis, but also create a special portfolio of information within our own platform to meet the different needs of people throughout the company -- because despite what some people claim, following online conversations is hard work. Our analyst team works with customers to understand their information needs -- and then crafts a custom portfolio of information made up of chosen feeds, filtered feeds, created feeds and even full websites, directly within the platform to make them easy to view and read on a regular basis, without getting overwhelmed. We put those sources into context for the user -- assigning them to folders, and even adding descriptions about the sources and the authors, and how it relates to the user specifically (ex. a blog written by someone who works at a competitor -- it's useful to know that info to understand the blog's viewpoint).

Posted by Chip Griffin on Monday, October 17, 2005 | | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Inform.com: Google News Meets TotalNews?

A new news aggregator is launching Inform.com, and it does so with a wet kiss from the New York Times' Bob Tedeschi today. It has a pretty slick layout, though as others have pointed out, it doesn't appear to add that much to the current marketplace.  It's basically just like Google News only with a different layout -- and a huge staff (see below).

It seems to emphasize slickness over everything else -- all sorts of frames, pop-ups, etc.  In addition, it is only fully functional in IE and neglects Firefox users. 

The NY Times piece describes the business model:

Inform will sell advertising on areas not already covered by articles from other publications, Mr. Goldman said, and will charge for services like personalized news files and archives. It is also considering selling its technology to newspapers for use on their sites to alert readers to related articles, perhaps in other publications as well as their own.

The advertising piece is interesting -- how will they avoid the TotalNews problem?  For those who aren't online news old-timers, TotalNews was sued by CNN and other major news sites for framing their stories and placing ads around the content frame.  The case was settled and TotalNews stopped the practice.  Yet it sounds like Inform.com has a similar scheme in mind.  We'll have to see what they do and how it turns out.

And it does appear that they'll have to come up with a heck of a lot of revenue to justify the enterprise.  Reuters reports that this just-launched startup has a massive workforce with a very low worker-to-input ratio:

Inform Technologies has 55 employees, half of whom are based in India. These workers have set up a list of nearly 1,000 Web-based news sources and 100 top blogs and are adding several new sources to the system each day, they said.

Posted by Chip Griffin on Monday, October 17, 2005 | | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Friday, October 14, 2005

links for 2005-10-14

Posted by Chip Griffin on Friday, October 14, 2005 | | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Thursday, October 13, 2005

links for 2005-10-13

Posted by Chip Griffin on Thursday, October 13, 2005 | | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Wednesday, October 12, 2005

links for 2005-10-12

Posted by Chip Griffin on Wednesday, October 12, 2005 | | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Tuesday, October 11, 2005

links for 2005-10-11

Posted by Chip Griffin on Tuesday, October 11, 2005 | | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Sunday, October 09, 2005

Moreover Acquired by Verisign

Tom Formeski over at SiliconValleyWatcher reports that the rumored Moreover deal is done and the buyer isn't someone anyone I know was guessing:

VeriSign is about to announce it acquired Moreover Technologies, the San Francisco based news aggregator. The acquisition price is around $25m according to SVW sources.

I have to confess that I don't quite get this deal.  Moreover seems pretty far afield from Verisign's existing lines of business that focus primarily on infrastructure.  Tom analyzes it this way:

The move by Verisign signals an ambition to aggregate a catalog of infrastructure capabilities such as security, content, and authentication services used by many large commercial web sites.

It is also interesting to note that Moreover went for far less than Topix.net, which garnered investments from Gannett, Knight-Ridder, and Tribune totaling about $50 million for 75 percent of that company.  The businesses are similar.  Moreover has a more established brand, while the publishing companies seemed most interested in Topix.net's technology for local targeting of ads and content.

It would be intriguing to know what Moreover's balance sheet looks like and how that may have affected the difference in valuation, especially Moreover seems to have more prominent business deals in place -- the question is are they revenue generators for the company or mere PR ploys?

UPDATE: Rafat over at PaidContent has more on the deal, including that Google made a last minute bid.

Posted by Chip Griffin on Sunday, October 09, 2005 | | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)

Saturday, October 08, 2005

links for 2005-10-08

Posted by Chip Griffin on Saturday, October 08, 2005 | | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Thursday, October 06, 2005

Topix Categorizes Partner Content

Topix.net “announced the availability of its NewsRank(TM) categorization technology across the 177 newspaper and television station Web sites of Gannett Co., Inc. (NYSE: GCI), Knight Ridder, Inc. (NYSE: KRI) and Tribune Company (NYSE: TRB).  Articles on Topix.net powered sites provide links to related, categorized content, discovered through their NewsRank(TM) technology.” 

Posted by Chip Griffin on Thursday, October 06, 2005 | | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Wednesday, October 05, 2005

links for 2005-10-05

  • IS BUZZ MARKETING ILLEGAL?
    "As marketers more frequently look to recruit consumers brand agents to spread goodwill for brands, industry attorneys view buzz marketing as a likely area of regulatory involvement, especially around the issue of compensating people to participate in buz
    (tags: BuzzMarketing WordOfMouth Marketing)

Posted by Chip Griffin on Wednesday, October 05, 2005 | | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)

Tuesday, October 04, 2005

links for 2005-10-04

Posted by Chip Griffin on Tuesday, October 04, 2005 | | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Monday, October 03, 2005

CustomScoop Adds Google Map of Clips

We have taken a few steps forward with CustomScoop Personal Edition today.  First, we introduced a mashup with Google Maps that shows pushpins for every location in which you have a clip.  It easily allows you to see any geographic patterns to your recent news coverage.

Currently, we have geocoded most newspapers and certain other traditional media in our system.  Due to the complexities of geocoding blogs, we have yet to do that but are exploring options in that arena.

The second advance today was that we added the ability of our current beta testers to invite friends or colleagues to join.  Each user has 5 invites available from their online control panel.  It's a little thank you for the early feedback we have received and a way to expand the circle of testers.

I would also like to thank TechCrunch and MicroPersuasion for their recent reviews.  Mike Arrington, Steve Rubel and their readers have provided us valuable feedback.

Posted by Chip Griffin on Monday, October 03, 2005 | | Comments (0) | TrackBack (1)

A Layman's Primer on AJAX

For all of those who have heard about this cool new Web 2.0 technology called AJAX but have no idea what it is or what it means for the average user, the CNET did a decent write-up. 

Posted by Chip Griffin on Monday, October 03, 2005 | | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

links for 2005-10-03

Posted by Chip Griffin on Monday, October 03, 2005 | | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Sunday, October 02, 2005

links for 2005-10-02

Posted by Chip Griffin on Sunday, October 02, 2005 | | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Saturday, October 01, 2005

Who Would Have Thought Jeff Jarvis Would Run an Ad for Dell Products?

In one of those odd twists of automated ad placement, I saw an ad for Dell product coupons (from a third party site, not Dell itself) in the RSS feed for Jeff Jarvis' blog tonight.  Those familiar with his "Dell Hell" experience will understand the overwhelming irony.

Jarvis_dell_ad

Posted by Chip Griffin on Saturday, October 01, 2005 | | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)

Yahoo to Answer Google on Blog Search

Stephen Baker over at Business Week's Blogspotting reports:

Look for Yahoo! to unveil a response to Google's blog search early next week. This from Bradley Horowitz, director of tech development in the company's search group. He wouldn't provide details in advance.

It will be interesting to see how the two products compare -- will Yahoo try to be more comprehensive?  Will they have a wider range of options?  Google's product doesn't eliminate the need for more specialized services like PubSub, Technorati or BlogPulse, and I doubt that Yahoo will have the same specialized features these players (and others like my own CustomScoop) have.  But Yahoo's entry will likely trigger a battle with Google that will make both services better (as their general search contest has).

Posted by Chip Griffin on Saturday, October 01, 2005 | | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

links for 2005-10-01

Posted by Chip Griffin on Saturday, October 01, 2005 | | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

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  • As founder & CEO of CustomScoop, I have a special interest in the intersection of technology and PR/marketing. In addition, as a serial entrepreneur and angel investor, I cover those topics, as well as an occasional post on the gadgets I love.

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