Lindsay Smith announced today on her blog that early bird tickets are now available for the F5 Expo featuring bestselling author of Tipping Point and Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell. As I mentioned in an earlier post, F5 Expo will focus on future trends in the online space including social media, digital media, SEO, and mobile apps. I’ve seen a preliminary list of additional speakers being added to the event, and it looks very impressive. Vancouver is starving for this type of an event. The first block of etickets released are available for $220 and includes: Malcolm Gladwell’s keynote presentation Access to all sessions and panel discussions Lunch and refreshments USB memory stick preloaded with exclusive offerings and savings for your business Admission to the post-event networking Continue Reading

Host of Tech Talk Expert on Global TV News and show organizer, Lindsay Smith asked me to join her advisory board this year to help with the latest edition of the Massive Tech Show to be held in April 2010. The event has lost some steam over the past couple of years and is looking to refocus. We had our first group advisory meeting earlier this month and the overwhelming consensus was the event needed a heavy makeover to make it relevant again for people doing business today. Some of the core decisions included a re-branding, focusing on social media (Twitter and Facebook) and online marketing (SEO and SEM), and placing a greater emphasis on quality content and big personalities. To that end, Lindsay announced yesterday she has signed on Malcolm Gladwell, best-selling author of Tipping Point, Continue Reading

New search engine Cuil has made no bones about it. They’re going after Google with what they believe is a superior search engine that searches for and ranks pages based on their content and relevance… and not on “superficial popularity metrics”. Ouch! According to their site, Cuil searches more pages on the web than anyone else—three times as many as Google and ten times as many as Microsoft. Interesting enough, many of the executives are ex-Google people. Try it out and let me know what you think. Are they a real threat to Google, or are they just trying to use this positioning to generate some early PR attention. http://www.cuil.com Continue Reading

Particularly interesting post on the Wired blog that illustrates how Barack Obama’s branding and marketing campaign usage of the Internet played a key role in propelling him victory of the Democrat nomination. Below is an excerpt with a link to the original post: “It’s impossible to imagine Barack Obama’s rise without the modern methods that his campaign used to organize itself, particularly around the internet,” says Simon Rosenberg, president and founder of the nonprofit think tank the New Democratic Network. “This really was the most successful campaign of the 21st century.” “This is what happens when you have a charismatic candidate, and you organize on a scale not seen before,” he adds. “Literally, the size and scale of this is unprecedented in American political history, and it wouldn’t Continue Reading

I was recently interviewed by Dave Young for an article entitled “Blogging for Business in 2008″ that appears in the latest edition of Ping! Zine Web Hosting Magazine. Below is an excerpt along with a link to the pdf: I studied their products and services, their corporate websites, but the real studying was done by reading their blog posts. Three of my personal favorite blogs belong to PEER 1, Mailtrust, and MailChimp, names you may already be familiar with if you pay attention to what’s going on in the hosting and software industries. Okay, so you are probably asking “what’s so great about these companies and their blogs?” I took the time to interview the people behind these successful blogs. The responses I received are quite intriguing. Rajan Sodhi, VP of Marketing and Communications Continue Reading

Google has come out with another free cool service called GOOG-411, a voice-activated 1-800 line that connects you to businesses in your area. For example, if you’re looking for ‘pizza delivery’, say it along with your city and state or province, and it will give you available businesses to choose from. Here is a video demonstration of how easy it is. I have already added it to my speed dial. Continue Reading

An incredible post regarding how to make your videos get viral attention on sites like YouTube appears on Techcrunch. The guest writer, Dan Ackerman Greenberg, co-founder of viral video marketing company The Comotion Group, has taken quite a beating. Most of it is quite deserving as his original post seems to not only endorse, but to provide detailed shady step-by-step tactics on ‘gaming’ sites like YouTube. This is definitely worth a read along with the 400+ comments. If you can sift past the belligerent commentators – I can’t stand it when people can only find their boldness while hiding behind the veil of anonymity – there is a very worthwhile debate going on here about what are morally acceptable online marketing practices. Read more Continue Reading

Dave Rosenberg compares new features for advertisers on MySpace and Facebook in reaching targeted members through behavioral patterns and interests. For an advertiser, this is very attractive, giving them the greatest chance to ensure their ad resonates and is relevant. To the user, it can feel very intrusive. Concerns of privacy will no doubt creep up. However, this is what members knowingly or unknowingly give up when they sign up for many of the free services they enjoy online like MySpace and Facebook. At Adtech New York, this topic came up a lot with many vendors reassuring the audience that no personal contact information is ever passed on to advertisers, and only behavioral patterns and interests (ie. jazz music) are used to help advertisers reach their audience. The profile info is Continue Reading