The GottaQuirk eMarketing blog The GottaQuirk blog is a great resource for information about internet marketing. It’s an up-to-date resource on the happenings in the fast-moving eMarketing industry. Statistics Unique Visitors: Total Unique Visitors: Outgoing: Total Outgoing: 0 0 3 6665

Articles from The GottaQuirk eMarketing blog

Websites to lose many users - fast! 2008-01-16 05:57:17 Up until now we have been forced to stay with particular services, despite them being terrible, unusable and useless. The reason we hang around? Because the net time cost of moving to a better service is insurmountably high. It is this high cost which keeps services and sites, which are otherwise outdated and useless, in the game (example: Hotmail).   Consider a world where this isn’t an issue. Imagine being able to host all your personal information from a single data store. No more constant updating of your multitude of profiles and no more barriers to just leaving a service for something better. Introducing – DataPortability.org, an open source set of standards and APIs which allow for applications and websites to migrate data between them (within the limits set-out by the user). So, this means, no more pesky signup screens. Simply quote your unique code and password and voila! It knows all the info it could ever need… Sigh, I just hope it takes off. Person ...

International CES (Consumer Electronics Show) 2008-01-14 09:12:03 It's that time of the year when all the tech savvy among us get excited by the prospect of what will be revealed at the Annual International Consumer Electonics Show. The show is held each year in the gambling capital of the world, Las Vegas, Nevada. CES has been responsible for launching many dominant technologies over the the past 41 years, with the first CES being held in 1967 in New York. It then moved to a bi-annual event with the Winter Consumer Electronics Show in January (Northern Hemisphere) in La Vegas, and the Summer CES in Chicago. In 1994 it was decided that the Summer CES would no longer take place and so in 1995 the CES became an annual event held in Las Vegas during one week of January of each year. Significant technology introductions over the years have included the VCR (1970), the CD player (1981), DVD (1996), HSDV (1998), and the Microsoft Xbox (2001). This year's show ran from Jan 7 – 10 and was displayed over a total area the size of 35 football fields. ...

Super High ROI 2008-01-12 23:38:53 I have a pet love for super low cost with super high ROI marketing. So, when I found this little clip it stuck and made me smile! With zero production cost and a very small time offset this video has managed to do rather well. 3,522,465 views to be exact, and some 14,000 comments. Not shabby at all… This raises the question – do you need a big budget for a big online success? Well, the short and long answer is, NO! In looking through the lists of top performing YouTube videos for this past year there appears to be an equal distribution between low and high budget successes. So, why did this low budget, two-and-a-half minute clip do so well? Hmm, good question… I think there are a number of factors for this: Happy Slip is a well recognised online brand with fairly high traffic, a good PageRank and many, many loyal subscribers (upwards of 150 comments per blog post). This video is simple, uncomplicated and is a great mix between “advert” a ...

Of Ferrets and Email 2008-01-12 00:27:49 In years gone by (let’s call them the “dark years”) if you asked someone what they couldn’t live without the answers you’d get would probably have ranged from food and sleep to sex and toothpaste. These days you’d get answers like "my mobile phone", "Facebook" and of course “my email”. We are slaves to our inboxes, well I am, and that’s why I thought this ad was so great. To be honest, it first appealed to me because there’s a ferret in it – I am desperate to add one to my farm of teeny animals but it’s illegal to keep them as pets in South Africa:( I must admit that I don’t use Yahoo! Mail (slave to Google as well) but I like this ad, and their Ladyboy ad so much that I’ve signed up to check it out. This actually fits in pretty well with a little Google vs. MSN vs. Yahoo! experiment I am working on at the moment – keep an eye out for the results. I can say this, trying t ...

Startup Q&A: Feedjit 2008-01-11 06:09:28 It was the night before Christmas, when I last posted on Feedjit. And lo and behold Santa brought me a late Xmas present in the form of commentary from CEO of Feedjit, Mark Maunder. Looking at the Alexa data below they are growing consistently (Mark says they have just reached 19 000 bloggers). Check out the Q& A below… Matt: It seems like the two new widgets are a response to the fact that most visits to content via aggregators simply stop at that content, and people then tend to go back for the next referral (I've not done the research but it seems intuitive) instead of browsing through the site that actually delivered/generated content ? Mark: Yes, search engine traffic and traffic from social media sites like Digg have very high bounce rates. Often 100%, meaning that people arrive at an entry page on your site - often deep in your site - but they never click a single link on your site. So our 'page popularity' widget and 'collaborative filtering' widget ar ... Amp

Humour from a dieting eMarketer 2008-01-11 01:11:13 Loved this pic from Philgomes. Comment on "Humour from a dieting eMarketer" ...

Blogs are playing an essential role in the Kenyan crisis 2008-01-10 04:05:47 The debate about new media has been going on for some time now, with many arguing that traditional media channels will have to adapt drastically to remain relevant. The conversation usually revolves around weighing up the difference between the immediacy, reader interaction and the possibility of user created content that new media provides, as opposed to the context, analysis and quality of writing offered by professional journalists. Some argue that blogs and other forms of user created content will remain niche activities as there is no way to ensure quality writing. The recent horrific events in Kenya have added an interesting perspective to this debate, as most of the updates and information coming out of the Kenyan crisis have been through sms’s from people actually experiencing the violence, and from the voices of individual bloggers. The question here is not so much overall in depth analysis or professional writing standards, but rather access to information about events ...

Teen Blogging Trends: Really? 2008-01-08 23:54:23 I recently stumbled across an article that discussed some trends about teens and their social media practices. Some of these trends I found to be predictable and expected, but others not. In fact, some I found quite difficult to believe. Since it was not too long ago that I myself was a pimply teenager, I should be able to relate... surely? But moving on, let’s take a look at some of these trends courtesy of Pew: The trends that I find to be expected include digital images being very important to teens as a means to share with friends and ignite virtual conversations. Similarly, it is not hard to see how email would have lost its appeal to teens when they have a plethora of social networking platforms at their disposal as well as texting and instant messaging. What I find interesting, but hardly surprising (no disrespect to the lads) is that girls appear to lead the boys in terms of not only contributing to websites, but fuelling growth in the teen blogosphere.  [Okay fine ... Blogging

Bureaucracy with a sense of humour 2008-01-08 04:26:13 An error page on the Eastern Cape Department of Health site is an indication that some interesting things may be happening behind the scenes. What starts out as a list of standard reasons for an error page notification becomes, if you continue reading, something a little different: 5. The page was considered redundant and was given a raise so it now works even less.   6. The page performed and illegal operation and was promoted to vice-president.   7. The page was on strike. We are busy negotiating with the unions now for better wages so it can come online.   8. The page is running late. This could be because the taxi's need to collect at least another 404 passengers. According to an article on IOL the site hasn’t been hacked, which suggests that it comes from the department itself. There’s no way to know if this page is a permanent addition to the site, so I suggest you go have a look while you can. If they do take it down, this grainy screenshot will h ...

Fighting poverty one goat at the time 2008-01-07 23:48:08 Do you know what a goober is? I don't. It’s either a convent, woman hater, talent or peanut. I think to myself, “It could be a woman hater”. My decision can mean the difference between 20 grains of rice to someone who needs 20 grains of rice more than I do, or no rice. Googling the word would probably be the humanitarian thing to do, but I grew up with Monopoly as religion, so cheating in games - any games - is really quite inconceivable. I click on peanut. Relief spreads through to my toes; someone's gonna eat tonight. At the same time, the competitive streak in me is pretty stoked I got the word right. This, of course, is the UN initiative - Free Rice. The concept is simple yet ingenious (a factor which has led to it's astounding success) - you guess what a word means, if you get it right, you've helped alleviate hunger by 'donating' 20 grains of rice. Obviously, 20 grains is not a whole lot. But it's an addictive game. Before you know it, you've donated 50 ...

QIK mobile video streaming - déjá vu? 2008-01-07 00:44:04 Comvu was the first live video broadcast service for 3G mobile phones that launched in February 2005. With the introduction of both mega-pixel cameras and Internet access on cellphones, it was only natural for a platform of this nature to come into being. So when I heard of Qik being launched very recently I thought to myself, “But this has been done already!? More than once..”. And to be honest, at first glance I couldn't spot the difference other than the Qik site being slightly less busy and easier to follow (please remember to consider where these comments are originating – a fairly technology ignorant individual eager to learn). So I decided to explore a little and perhaps do a little comparison. After my exploration into what these applications are about, I took on a different perspective. My new angle was this: as a technologically uneducated person, which would I use and why? Well, I would have to say that I would go with Qik. The reason for this is that it ...

Swedish Armed Forces 2008-01-06 03:26:24 Here's one that's a little different. Part of a campaign of similar clips for the Swedish Armed Forces, this Labyrinth ad sends its target audience a baiting challenge. It's a pretty simple campaign, but by getting the adrenaline pumping and showing characters that somehow remain cool and in command of a intense situation the clip really does make all of the alphas out there want to step up to the plate. Comment on "Swedish Armed Forces" ...

Given the temperature, one would think he'd have noticed 2008-01-05 01:54:02 Olympus has created a viral that creatively demonstrates the power of its “optical zoom”, and they’ve done it without showing the actual product (the camera) in the narrative section of the ad. This ad shows, it doesn’t tell - which is generally a sign that your ad is on the right track. The advert also made me laugh, and achieves the right combination of buffoonery and genius. I do have to wonder about the fact that the temperature out there didn’t warn our brave adventurer of his exposure before his phone call, but I think we can forgive them this small narrative inconsistency.  Comment on "Given the temperature, one would think he'd have noticed" ...

Google's 'Inadvertent' Mistake! 2008-01-04 06:36:59 Earlier this week Australian and New Zealand publishers who use the Google AdSense service were in for a bit of a shock when they received their payments for amounts owing to them for November's advertising. They would have been unpleasantly surprised to find that the amount they received was not as much as they had been expecting. Their initial frustrations then changed to relief as they found out that they were right to have been expecting a slightly greater amount deposited in their bank account. AdSense had made a rather absurd blunder. It has been revealed that AdSense managed to invert the currency between the Australian and New Zealand Dollar with that of the United States Dollar. This therefore resulted in the US Dollar being weaker than the aforementioned currencies, with the publishers receiving less than they should have.  At first it was expected that all publishers outside of the United States would be affected but upon further investigation, the mistake only c ... Google

Blogging is more professional than Social Networking 2008-01-04 01:00:50 I’ve been working at Quirk now for about a month and am starting to find myself asking more and more industry related questions, so today I thought I would tackle one of these subjects. This post was inspired by Darren Rowse of ProBlogger Blog Tips who I have come to benefit from greatly during my transition into the online reputation environment. My blog is more a commentary on the point raised when Darren was looking at the question of Blogging VS Social Networking. I am one who definitely sits on the blogging side of the fence when it comes to the two. I had used (and still do use) social networks for quite some time before joining Quirk and it has only been since joining this fine company that I have been truly introduced to the blogosphere, and I must admit that I have become a huge fan in this short period of time. Blogging allows the author greater control over the area where his or her posts are being exposed. The authors are able to place their blogs in the environmen ... Blogging