Blog News Watch

User have seen a lot of kind of social networking so far, but yet missed something like MingleNow. Don’t even think about Myspace, as far as I can see that will be just another Blogger.com sooner or later. Mingle now, the latest social networking company that has been in development for many months, launches a public testing version just today. It will be a bar/restaurant social networking site, means online interaction between booze buddies, sharing stories of wild night out. Yea sure no one will mind to share some chit chat about Vodka on the rocks and right next chick with the blue eyes, when all other social networking sites are blazing hot air with politics and laws. This fall, MingleNow will hold offline events at some of the more than 900,000 locales it features.

It provides users with a social calendar that can be exported to blog pages like orkut, myspace etc.(just like appointment books, so that your friends will know if you are free to rock tonight) along with user’s personal blogs. MingleNow also allows you to earn VIP points. You get points by inviting others to join MingleNow, and you can redeem the point’s offline, with free drinks at bars, so that means bar owner’s also getting into it for potential customers.

MingleNow is owned by Blue Lithium, an online marketing company in San Francisco. MingleNow a new test in blog network, surely make some buzz! Booze time guys.

Social networking site, bar and restaurant, MingleNow, Blue Lithium

While whole advertising network, publishers and Medias are focused on PPC (Pay per click) advertising, Metacafe which is a video sharing site just like YouTube comes up with pay per view (PPV) concept. Actually Google was after PPV implementation of its video advertising quite a while, but didn’t yet introduce it. Looks like Metacafe beat everyone in the race of PPV by introducing Producer Rewards program.
Metacafe will pay you $5 for every thousand views your video gets on our site. Payment starts when your video reaches 20,000 views and has a rating of 3.00 or higher. That means only quality production will get paid; this is certainly a motivation boost for amateur video maker who will now more eager to produce quality content. I also like the part that the license to Metacafe is a non-exclusive deal - you retain ownership of your video. For quality and copyright violation control you must own all the rights to the video and the video must meet certain content guidelines, which mean they are not encouraging any stealing. The guidelines are very straight forward and simple– you have to be the owner of the video, give non exclusive rights to Metacafe to broadcast that(whole or part), Family friendly contents (No adult, erotic, hatred or violence), must reach minimum 20,000 view and minimum 20 seconds(maximum 6 minutes) length.

I am sure more and more organization will jump up to this PPV style sooner or later, don’t be surprised if you see commercial videos are also rolled out in PPV business. For advertisers it can be the best way to attract consumers, since people feel much closer to videos rather than text or audio. Things are going to change fast now. So those amateur video makers just relax make some quality stuffs and enjoy flows of cash, looks like a lot will flow.

Metcafe, video sharing network, PPV, pay per view, earning, YouTube

Click fraud isn’t something new; in fact it’s as old as the pay per click advertising program. But marketers, even as they continue to push more of their ad budgets online, are starting to ask for better proof. Companies are concerned that so-called click fraud may be driving up their ad bills, so they are sharing their proprietary ad data with click-trackers, which try to figure out how prevalent such devious clicks are.

Click fraud has been a growing concern this year for advertisers. It’s not that they want to spend less, it’s just that they want to know that their advertising campaign is drawing attention in cost effective manner. In fact in my opinion this click fraud does hampering both marketer/adviser and publishers. When click frauds goes increasingly out of control, advertiser will loose the faith on effectiveness of online advertising, or should I say pay per click measurement system, thus publisher like us will have to rely on pay per sale type advertising. Needless to say that pay per click is much lucrative for small and medium publishers then pay per sale.

The New York Times published “Marketers Demanding Better Count of the Clicks�? will give you a better idea on how desperate are marketers for better measurements of their advertisement sales. Whatever the outcome of their efforts is, publisher’s earnings will be affected.

click fraud, publishers, marketers, advertisers, ppc, pay per click

Just a day ago I was talking about freedom of speech and suppressing blogs by government and corporations, and Amnesty international’s call to bloggers. Looks like Amnesty international was not over-reacting at all. If you haven’t yet read the “Under Fire, Soldiers Kill Blogs�?, I think it’s a very good time to read. Milblogger’s are getting pounded by authorities and so called security risks laws.

It’s not that I am not aware of that security risk involved in leaking strategic information, and I completely agree that active duty personnel’s blog has to be monitored for the sake of national security. But something doesn’t fit here really, it’s like telling someone you can express yourself, you have the freedom but say what you like to here, don’t say what you don’t like. Most of the miliblogger’s I saw write about there daily activities, some like OPFFOR discuss and criticize foreign policies etc. (more…)

This year’s LeWeb3 in Paris, France December 11-12 will be organized by SixApart’s Loic Le Meur together with TechCrunch.Those who are not aware what is LeWeb3, it is a two days conference for discussing next generation web & mobile services, virtual social networking, media and related stuffs. SixApart’s newly lunched VOX, Vpod.tv, Orange & Google is also official partner of this Third Les Blogs Conference. In 2005 the second conference was attended by 450 bloggers & entrepreneurs from around 25 countries. This year over a thousand participants are expected. The entire conference will be in English and as last year.

The registration fee for this event will be 300 EUR (VAT excluded) if you register before Nov 11th or 500 EUR (VAT excluded) from Nov 11th to Dec 10th. This includes the two-day conference, lunches on both days and the cocktail party on Monday evening. As of October 29, 2006 already 129 participant’s listing has been confirmed.

You can check out the conference wiki or blog for more information.

LeWeb3, Les Blogs Conference, Paris, France, Social Networking

Consumer RSS feed reader or aggregator market is sliding, actually it’s getting redundant. Why? It’s already integrated with every popular browser and getting integrated with popular email platforms, so why would you use software to read feeds. The feed reader market is started to feel that shifting, like the Pluck RSS Reader is shutting down, according to a message posted on the Pluck website:

“All versions of Pluck’s RSS readers for Internet Explorer, Firefox and Pluck’s web edition will be discontinued on 1/5/2007. The RSS Readers have served our community of end users well for several years, but with Pluck’s focus in other business areas, the venerable RSS readers are set to be retired from our product line.”

Current Pluck users have to export their data within January 5, 2007.They also clearly stated why they’re exiting the consumer RSS Reader market: (more…)

Good lord! Now Amnesty International is taking the stands for bloggers. I think it’s about time, so many places bloggers are getting arrested, jailed, and harassed in the name of law/national security/religion.

Iranian blogger Mr. Sanjari was arrested in early October following his blogging about conflicts between the Iranian police and the supporters of Shia cleric Ayatollah Boroujerdi. One British blogger who resides in got deported from France for his blog on France’s new Armenian law. China sued Google for delivering regulated content in their search engine. More and more in every corner of globe many governments and organizations were using technology to suppress the free flow of information among their citizens. Sites and blogs have been shut down and firewalls built to prevent access to information. Even in country like USA students are condemn for their blogs even worse, by school governing body. (more…)

What a weekend WordPress just announced releasing WordPress 2.0.5 Ronan for public realease. Which will be the latest upgrade of 2.0 series, which now counts over 1.2 million downloads.

RONAN is now available for download for all users(it is not beta anymore). Traditionally WordPress versions are named after jazz musician, but this time they make it an exception. This version is named after first WP baby Ronan, the new born son of Ryan Boren. Congrats! Ryan, may baby Ronan have a long, healthy life.

Changes in WordPress 2.0.5
Over 50 bug fixes mostly minor bug fixes around feeds, custom fields, and internationalization, but WordPress recommended immediate upgrade for better security and stabilities. You can check out the list of changes in Mark Jaquith’s blog post.

Also you can track the bug list’s in WordPress Dev tracker.

Podcaster great news, Google is preparing Monetizing options for you. Google plans to release Google AdSense for Audio to monetize podcasts anytime before holiday season. This is airing through out blogosphere. Seeking Alpha has already published an article on this, so is webpronews.

Google was after this since the beginning of the year, since they contracted with several podcast engineers to help them develop Google AdSense for Audio. According to some the product was originally targeted to release on September, but apparently it slipped behind a month or so. Rumor is AdSense for Audio will involve, in part, contextual advertising around podcasts.

Well Google as always didn’t yet made any official statement on this, but didn’t deny also that they have a program at hand. But you will see in Google’s job board Google is looking to hire a Strategic Partner Development Manager for AdSense for Audio, which is based out of Newport Beach, CA (the home of dMarc), where clearly stated the Audio expertise.

So it isn’t quite a rumor, Google is after audio monetizing, and sooner or later it’s coming out.

Adsense for audio, Google, podcast monetizing, podcaster, podcasting

A Organization named “Scholarship Around the US” has announced the launch of The Blogging Scholarship. The organization offering bloggers a $5,000 scholarship annually. Requirements are pretty simple –must be a student in US college or university (doesn’t matter foreign student or not, though at one point in the site it says US resident), minimum GPA 3.0, and a full time enrolled student. Oh one other thing you have to agree to disclose your real identity, no screen name will be accepted. You can get more details on their site.

The top 10 scholarship finalists will be announced on October 30, 2006. On October 31st a public vote will be conducted to determine the first winner. Voting will be closed on November 5th and the winner will be announced on November 6th.

So as you can see time is crucial and almost up, why not jump on and grab this opportunity to show your flair. You will find the application form/ nomination form here.

weblog, USA, blog, blogging, bloggers, blogs, education, college, tuition, scholarship, scholarships