This is the Link Report for September 18th through September 19th:

Please feel free to post your thoughts in the comment section below

To see all of our links please visit our Delicious page at Delicious.com/goldsteinmedia

• Social media on marketers’ menu for 2010 – Trends & Ideas – BizReport – While email remained the most popular media among marketers for use next year (56.8% "realistically" plan to use it), social media isn't far behind. Over half (56.3%) "realistically" plan to include it in future marketing plans, found the Center for Media Research.
• Business Implications of Facebook Lite: Advice for Social Media Marketers and Businesses on Facebook | Suite101.com – Facebook Lite is a stripped-down version of the Facebook social media application that went live in September of 2009. Facebook has stated their intention to be the service of those users who do not have high-speed internet connections or bandwidth to support the main site.
• Local companies embrace social media to bond with customers | Minnesota Public Radio NewsQ – We've heard a lot lately about the power of social media services like Facebook and Twitter to connect people, spread news and even influence world events. Tens of millions of people are signed up for one or more of these services that connect folks with shared interests or concerns.
• The New AIM: Less Clunky and Annoying, More Social – PC World – I use AOL’s instant-messaging network all day long, but I’m not sure when I last used the AIM software itself (with the exception of the iPhone version). I’ve associated it with feature bloat, annoying ads, and a sort of old-timy, Web 1.0 feel. So I long ago switched to other clients that support the AIM network (Apple’s iChat when I’m on a Mac, GAIM when I’m on Windows, and the Web-based Meebo anywhere and everywhere).
• Blueprint: A CSS Framework | Spend your time innovating, not replicating – Blueprint is a CSS framework, which aims to cut down on your development time. It gives you a solid foundation to build your project on top of, with an easy-to-use grid, sensible typography, useful plugins, and even a stylesheet for printing.
• Ultimate Cheat Sheet Colllection – Hungred.com – Cheat Sheets are handle for web development. Usually, these sheets are either printed out and pasted on the wall of your working area or they are placed on your computer as wallpaper. Referencing in this way makes working faster and more effective. Here are a complete list usually used by most designers and developers during web development. Enjoy!
• Tutorial: How to change plugin table structure in Wordpress – Hungred.com – Some of us will have problem updating or changing your table structure in your Wordpress plugin after it has been released to the public. Many people will come up with different ideas to change their existing plugin structure to a new one. Idea such as checking for that particular column existence either through pure SQL or mixture of SQL and PHP. However, the approach here may be a bit overkill. There is a much simpler way.
• RedBeacon Wins The Top Prize At TechCrunch50 2009 – RedBeacon is a new service that made its public debut at TechCrunch50 that further streamlines this process by bringing the OpenTable model of online transactions to much broader spectrum of services.
• Google Launches New Ad Marketplace; Display Ads Will Never Be the Same – You’re probably familiar with Google AdSense and AdWords, Google’s (Google) flagship advertising products. It’s how Google makes its billion of dollars. Highly targeted text ads appear on Google search and third party websites that are part of the AdSense program. Advertisers buy ads based on keywords, with more popular keywords costing more per click than less popular terms.
• MediaPost Publications Study: Half Of Ad Impressions, 95 Percent Of Clicks Fraudulent 09/18/2009 – Click fraud continues to plague online advertising, but many just want to sweep it under the rug. Radar Research managing partner Marissa Gluck calls it "the dirty little secret of the online ad industry that no one wants to talk about."

This is the Link Report for September 11th through September 13th:

Please feel free to post your thoughts in the comment section below

To see all of our links please visit our Delicious page at Delicious.com/goldsteinmedia

• What’s Yahoo’s “Plan B” For Search? – If the DOJ won't let the Microsoft/Yahoo Deal go through, what's next for the #2 search engine?
• Joe Wilson’s Payments Provider Reports DDoS Attack – The Austin-based online payments startup Piryx reports that it was targeted in a DDoS (distributed denial of service) attack yesterday due to its hosting of a fundraising campaign for Joe Wilson – the politican who made headlines this week after shouting “You Lie!” during Obama’s health care reform speech.
• What information is "personally identifiable"? | Electronic Frontier Foundation – You'd be surprised how information thought to be obscure really isn't.
• Facebook Lite Threatens Facebook’s Brand Advertising Businesss – Facebook Lite seems to be missing the mark. A very interesting piece on how this could hurt brands.
• Why Social RSS Could Be Huge – Phil Baumann talks about how using RSS socially could really bring about great results
• Forget Gen Y: Gen X is Making Real Change – ReadWriteEnterprise – Sometimes even the best researchers forget that the answer you get depends entirely on who you ask. A new Forrester survey of 2,000 information workers has revealed that despite the hype, it's not Gen Y that's getting business to adopt collaborative technology. Gen X, those who are 30-43, are the ones leading the charge for social computing.
• SEMPO Says Time To Get Serious About Mobile Search – SEMPO yesterday released a “POV” white paper that seeks to orient search marketers to the growing mobile market, mobile SEO and mobile paid search in particular. It cites the dramatic growth of mobile web usage and anticipated future growth in arguing that search marketers now need to take mobile seriously. Developed by SEMPO’s Emerging Technologies Committee, the report asks (and seeks to answer) several key questions
• The most popular digital goods are virtual money, weapons and gifts | VentureBeat – People are paying real money for digital goods in all sorts of online applications ranging from Facebook apps to massively multiplayer online games. The No. 1 thing they buy is virtual money. Other top items include virtual weapons and gifts for social networking friends, according to a survey released today.
• No, the Cloud is Not Killing Open Source – Andrea DiMaio from the Gartner Blog Network asks an interesting question in a post titled "Is Cloud Computing Killing Open Source in Government?," and InfoWorld weighs in on the issue as well. One might as well not limit the question to government usage. Is cloud computing killing open source in general? DiMaio notes that government officials in London and Washington D.C. are finding that primary drivers for open source adoption–including cost savings and vendor independence–are going away, while free, cloud applications proliferate and grab headlines.
• Uh-Oh! DOJ Expands Review of Microsoft-Yahoo Search Deal – Google may already have a monopoly on search, but that doesn’t mean the proposed search deal between Microsoft and Yahoo will be automatically greenlighted by federal officials. The Justice Department has expanded its review of the partnership agreed to by the search laggards, Bloomberg is reporting. The DOJ is going to challenge the argument that you need to be bigger in order to compete. I couldn’t agree more. My view is that you need to be smarter and faster. Of course as both Microsoft and Yahoo’s history in search proves, they’ve been neither.

This is the Link Report for August 26th through August 27th:

Please feel free to post your thoughts in the comment section below

To see all of our links please visit our Delicious page at Delicious.com/goldsteinmedia

• Phone Call Tracking in Google Analytics – Website Magazine – Website Magazine – UK Internet marketing company ClickThrough Marketing today introduced a module add-on for Google Analytics that allows advertisers to track phone call conversions from any source/advertising channel.
• Ready for a Mobile (Advertising) Storm? – Website Magazine – Website Magazine – A report from Juniper Research has found that growing consumer adoption of mobile Internet services and heightened brand engagement with mobile services will be reflected in a sharp increase in expenditure on mobile Internet advertising. How much of an increase? According to the report, ad spend on the mobile Internet will reach $500 million globally in 2009 and rise to nearly $2 billion per year by 2014.
• Essential Wordpress Plugin: Add To Facebook – Website Magazine – Website Magazine – Plenty of plugins are out there to help readers share your blog content, but perhaps the new Add To Facebook plugin for Wordpress is the most significant. For starters, consider Facebook's more than 250 million users.

  The plugin is extremely easy to add if you are using one of the latest versions of Wordpress. Simply download the zip file and upload it through your Wordpress administration panel. You can then choose your settings for the plugin under your Wordpress "Settings" section – either a text-only link or a small image and text link, and whether to add the link to every post.

• Snow Leopard review – A very thorough review of Apple's new Snow Leopard OS at Engadet
• EASTER EGG: Yelp Is the iPhone’s First Augmented Reality App – This makes your iPhone just that much more cooler and helpful. Augmented reality uses your iPhone’s camera, GPS, and compass to show virtual items in the real world. Put your camera in front of a restaurant and it will come up with info, or use it to find nearby Twitter users
• Audi Taps its Facebook Fans to Help Design Car of the Future – The German luxury car maker is taking a stab at using social media to create buzz about the company, the brand and their cars. Very clever
• New Facebook Privacy Policies Will Have A Significant Impact On Platform Applications – As a result of a new privacy agreement with Canada, Facebook has issued statements suggesting that there could be major platform changes ahead for developers.
• New Attack Cracks Common Wi-Fi Encryption in a Minute by PC World: Yahoo! Tech – Computer scientists in Japan say they've developed a way to break the WPA encryption system used in wireless routers in about one minute. (That's great! <insert sarcasm>)
• Social Networks: Boomers Feel Left Out – Even though baby boomers make up more than one quarter of all US Internet users, and even though the majority of this group spends over five hour per week online, a new survey by Burst Media found that only 14% of boomers feel that the content on the Internet is focused on people their age.
• 5 Social Media Lessons Learned from Whole Foods – Whole Foods is into using Social Media. The best way to improve your own company's use of social media is to learn from others. Check out the case study on Mashable.

This is the Link Report for August 6th through August 7th:

• Georgia Takes a Beating in the Cyberwar With Russia – Bits Blog – NYTimes.com – Besides the bloody shooting war going on between Georgia and Russia, there’s another, quieter battle going on in cyberspace.The Georgian government is accusing Russia of disabling Georgian Web sites, including the site for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
• Twitter Restores Service After Online attack – NYTimes.com – Twitter, the popular microblogging site, was out of service much of the day Thursday as it worked to defend itself against a Web attack, but service appeared to have been restored by late evening.Many of Twitter’s 45 million legitimate visitors were unable to use the service for hours. Analysts characterized the disruption as a denial-of-service attack, in which hackers overwhelm a Web site by sending it a deluge of junk requests, and one suggested the attack might have originated in Russia or Georgia.
• Pronounce Names – Dictionary of Name Pronunciation, How to pronounce names, How to say a name, Name pronunciation, Name pronunciations, How to pronounce a name -
• Revision3 > Hak5 > Episode 524: USB Multipass – Linux, Trinity, USB – Why carry around a dozen bootable USB drives when you could merge ‘em all into one? On his episode we build a USB Multipass complete with customized boot menu ready to launch any of favorite tools–including Backtrack, Ophcrack, Kon-boot, dban, freedos, and more. Plus Shannon reviews the Trinity Rescue Kit, the boot disc dubbed CPR for your computer.
• 3 unveils MiFi mobile Wi-Fi service – mirror.co.uk – The 3 network has just pulled the wrappers off MiFi, a mobile Wi-Fi device that allows you to connect any Wi-Fi equipped device to the web no matter where you are.
• Is Cyber Warfare to Blame for Twitter Meltdown? – Everybody’s still regrouping after today’s Denial of Service attacks against Twitter, FacebookFacebookFacebook, LiveJournal, and other social media websites. Now, however, some further details about what happened and who might be behind it are coming to light.
• 20 Simple Productivity Tools for Bloggers – Great post full of links to Mashable’s pick for 20 great productivity tools for Bloggers
• Digg Ads Are Here: Will Users Bury Them Into Oblivion? – Two months ago, Digg (Digg) announced a lynchpin in its revenue strategy: Digg Ads. The program, an attempt to fix the company’s inability to turn a profit, allows users to vote on specific ads within the homepage feed. The more diggs, the less the ad costs to the advertisers. But if Digg users hate the ad, then their downvotes increase the ad price.
• Team Apart Makes the Virtual Meeting Social [Invites] – There is a lot of software out there for conducting virtual conferences and performing demos: GoToMeeting, Microsoft Office Live Meeting, WebEx, and AdobeAcrobat Connect immediately come to mind. Most of these programs though require software to be installed and are meant for conference meetings rather than team collaboration. They’re not virtual workspaces.
• Koobface Virus Gets Smarter; Targets Twitter and Facebook Users [Alert] – Koobface, a virus that targets computers via social networking sites, is apparently back and with added sophistication.A typical Koobface attack – like the one that surfaced on Twitter last month – comes via a link that purports to be an interesting video (i.e. – someone tweets “my home video” with a link to what looks like a YouTubeYouTubeYouTube page). Those videos then tell you that you need to upgrade your Flash player – which, many legitimate videos often do too. Upon “upgrading,” however, the user is infected with the virus.

I’ve been on Twitter for a while now and I’ve seen a lot of spamming and scamming, but tonight one of the people I follow (well not anymore) started posting ads in their Twitter stream. I looked into it further and I have to admit it intrigued me. Making money by allowing ads into your stream is an interesting consept, but I don’t think it’s a good idea. Twitter is about relationships.

Would you go to a party and start spouting off a commercial for Advil or dare I say it Motrin? I sure hope you wouldn’t. Twitter is like a big party and it should be treated as such.

There are many Twitter ad sites out there, but this is the one I found tonight in the Twitterverse, RevTwt.com.

You enjoy tweeting with your friends, but wouldn’t it be great to make a little extra cash on the side while you post on Twitter? RevTwt has the solution: we give you links to post on your Twitter account, and you earn money each time someone clicks on your link!

One thing is for sure… if you start putting ads in your stream people will stop being your friend.

I’d like to hear your thoughts. Post them below in the comments.

Several elements make up viral marketing. Not all of them need to be active in a strategy for it to be effective, but the more of them the better the results.

Six main fundamental rules that should be followed to helpy our viral campaign successful:

1. make sure there is an effortless transfer to others
2. give away products or services of value
3. make sure it can easily scale from small to large
4. take advantage of basic human behaviors and motivations
5. make good use of your existing communication networks (linkedin, face-to-face networking, social media, etc.)
6. take advantage of what’s already out there and other people’s resources

Their are 7 key secrets to any viral marketing initiative:

1. Get the headline right. Make the headline strong by putting in numbers and showing value to the reader.
2. Take advantage of buzz-worthy topics. Align your campaign to what is currently a hot topic being talked about.
3. Try and cram as much value you can into a small package. The more value that the reader/viewer can find in your campaign the more likely they are to pass it along and so on. More Value in One Place = More Impact.
4. Don’t event the rules as you go. Learn from what already works and use a proven formula.
5. Keep your viral content to the point and concise. Outline the overall value, otherwise you run the risk of having the viewer/reader moving on.
6. Links, yes, putting links into your viral content will add value and additional depth. But make sure the links are carefully chosen.
7. Finally YOU can start the chain reaction and get the word-of-mouth off the ground.