Facebook

Facebook ads have 3 parts:

Social Ads: Ads that are targeted to the user and user’s friends

Beacon: Ad widgets that advertisers can put on their own that allow facebook members become produce endorsers.

Insight: Provides advertises with deep analytics data so they can understand who is intereseted in there products

“Facebook Ads represent a completely new way of advertising online,” Zuckerberg told an audience of more than 250 marketing and advertising executives in New York. “For the last hundred years media has been pushed out to people, but now marketers are going to be a part of the conversation. And they’re going to do this by using the social graph in the same way our users do.”

Read Official Press Release Facebook Unveils Facebook Ads

Over the next 7 days he will be giving away $54,000 worth of prizes that were donated to him from the blogging community. In total there are around 115 sponsors with some donating multiple prizes.  The prizes range from theme songs composed for podcasts/videos (something I wouldn’t mind winning myself), to iPods, to logo designs, to magazine subscriptions, to books, to cash and vouchers and so much more. Prizes values range from just a few dollars in value to thousands of dollars.

What are the Rules and how do you get in on the action! 

• Prizes will be won given away in a series of different rounds over the next week - mostly between Friday and Sunday (a little weekend fun).
• Tomorrow I’ll be posting a full list of prizes that have been donated. They’ll include both the prizes and who they’ve been donated by.
• We’ll also launch the competition tomorrow with the first round of giveaways - the purpose of this first competition is simply to spread the word of the competition.
• The competitions will have a range of entry criteria. Some will simply be asking you to leave a comment to say that ‘you’re in’. Others will require you to write a post on a particular topic or in a particular style (like my Group Writing Projects).

Problogger has release a full list of what prizes he will be giving away.  Read this post to see a complete list.

The latest big traffic builder that everyone is talking about is only 3 days old and is being talked about by all the big players:

John Chow blogging on BlogRush, with his “Increase Your Blog Traffic with BlogRush”

Shoemoney on “How to Get 45,000 Impressions a Day from BlogRush“. This was quite an interesting read as Jeremy goes on to offer up his own impressions earned through the network, to anyone that signs up to BlogRush through his blog. I’m sure he will build a massive base of members under him, but not even Jeremy himself is sure how profitable they will be in the long run.

Jim Kukral’s post “John Reese & Blogrush Want To Resell Your Data” this morning. It looks like we finally have some negative publicity against BlogRush.

So How Does BlogRush Work
BlogRush is a Link Exchange for the web 2.0 world. Once it is installed the system counts the number of impressions it gets and that determines how many times our feed will get shown across the network. This means if your blog gets 200 impressions per day, it will shown on 200 times per day on other sites.

You can gain extra credits when people you refer gain impressions with their widgets. Each time one of your referral gets an impression, you earn on credit.

People become your referral when they click on your widget and sign up for BlogRush, or when they use your affiliate link.

Watch a video that will explain the process

Then about 20 minutes ago a friend who I trust in the business who is pretty close to Kelly Felix says he is just about bankrupt and hoping to climb out of the hole and even make some profit. The source also says that Kelly blew a ton of investors money buying advertising on Howard Stern and fake commercials/tv spots to make it look like he was rich.

The business is listed for sale at BizQuest.com. IT has a listed selling price of $8 Million. No real details are listed as to why that the business is being sold other than:

Multiple owners looking to work on various other projects, separately.

To me this is so funny considering the idea of The Rich Jerk is to teach you how to make money online and gain your freedom. Now that same company may be going under. I will do a follow-up if I find out more.

• Free meals
• Swimming spa
• Free doctors onsite
• Free Laundry service
• Engineers can spend 20% of time on independent projects

No wonder Google gets 1,300 résumés a day.

Oprah got to tour the Googleplex for her show to talk about why it is such a great place to work. Watch the video below.

You will read a lot in the forums that you should go after popular niches. They are the the ones that will have the most traffic. This is true but they are also the one’s that are going to be most competitive. You will also see people talking about going after niche’s int the Longtail arena. Though they will have less traffic they will be more targeted and have a better conversion rate. To me this is all true. There is no perfect niche out there. It is a niche because it is an interest to someone. No matter if it is a dozen people or millions of people. There is always away to make money advertising to any niche. It is all in the way that you market to them that is going to attract them to what you have to offer. So don’t be fooled into thinking that just because you niche is very popular that you will be able to make money in that niche. You have to have the right message and the right ad placement.

So sit down think about what interest you and what you know about and use that as your starting point and not what Technorati says is popular.

Now don’t get me wrong I am not saying that going after what is popular and hot at this very moment is not going to make you money if you do it correctly. I think one great article the is talking about the proper ways to do this is over at Profit JaneMayblogs.com - From A Niche Right Now - A Step By Step Guide. In this artilce she is talking about creative way that you can make money and use the popularity of the niche to earn the money.  Will this work for everyone NO! But why not give it a shot.

This upgrade will be rolled out over the coming weeks and users will have access to the old version for a month.

Search Engine Land has some screenshots of the new version.

Google launched a pay-per-action advertising system. Instead of paying when someone clicks on your ad with AdWords, you only pay when someone performs a specific task that you choose - such as signing up for your newsletter, making an order, downloading a whitepaper, etc.

Here’s the official description from Google’s pay-per-action site:

Increase your advertising reach while paying only for actions that you define. First, you’ll create an ad and define the action that you want a user to perform when they visit your site, such as signing up for your newsletter or purchasing a product. Then you’ll set the amount that you’re willing to pay when this action is completed. Finally, you’ll install conversion tracking code on your website so that we can verify when an action has been completed.

Once you’ve completed these steps, publishers in the Google content network can choose to place your ads on their website. You’ll only pay when a user clicks on your ad, visits your site, and completes your desired action.

Pay-per-action ads complement your current campaigns by providing a new pricing model that extends your reach and allows you to pay only when a defined action is completed on your site. This beta feature is currently available to AdWords advertisers in the United States on a limited basis as part of our beta test.

From what I can tell these pay-per-action ads will be similar to how publishers currently use Google AdSense ad blocks on their site.

From the pay-per-action FAQ:

What is the text link format for pay-per-action ads?

Text links are hyperlinked brief text descriptions that take on the characteristics of a publisher’s page. Publishers can place them in line with other text to better blend the ad and promote your product.

For example, you might see the following text link embedded in a publisher’s recommendatory text: “Widgets are fun! I encourage all my friends to Buy a high-quality widget today.” (Mousing over the link will display “Ads by Google” to identify these as pay-per-action ads).

Though the maximum length of a text link is 90 characters, we’ve found that shorter links perform better because they allow the publisher use the link in more places on her/his site and in different context. The maximum length is 90 characters but less than 5 words is best. Even better, just use your brand name to offer maximum flexibility to the publisher.

Rarely is there a technology announcement which truly catches the world attention. The closest thing in recent years was the announcement of the Apple iPod having video capabilities in October 2005. Not only was that cool, but it ushered in a whole new era in technology - the video webcast or vlog. Rumors have swirled since then that there were no more breakthroughs for Apple to conquer - except for maybe the phone. That was until now.

In Jobs’ keynote presentation, the announcement was made how Apple had taken three proven devices - the iPod, the cellular phone and mobile computing, to not only the next level, but combined into one product - the iPhone.

On the iPod side, the specs are unbelievably sweet. The small tiny screen showing small tiny versions of Johnny Depp have now expanded to the full size of the unit with full blasting colour and a 3.5 inch screen. Navigation, the kingpin of Apple devices, is also a breeze with a new “multitouch” screen which you can “flick” you finger up and down to scroll VERY QUICKLY. Oh, and did I say there was NO stylus? That’s right, Apple has chosen to create this device in the image of no device before it - everything is manageable with a flick or a scroll of a finger. Flick through songs or full album art. You’ll find your song or artist just as fast as you did with your iPod. Amazing.

And the phone? Well, Jobs and company did the right thing by choosing the most popular technology in the world - GSM. Though it wasn’t fully announced whether it is a locked or unlocked phone (meaning if it was unlocked you could get it to work with your GSM SIM card right away!), the path of least resistance and most familiarity will mean “non-techies” will take the phone’s ease of use quickly - even if they don’t download podcasts. Another VERY cool feature is the sensors it has built in - it’s the only phone I’m aware of which will detect the fact the unit is up against your face (when you’re talking) and shut off the screen automatically to save battery life. Sweet!

The Internet features? Well it’s running a full OS X operating system - I repeat, the FULL operating system, and not a watered down mobile system like Windows CE / Mobile. This means it is essentially a full Mac computer in your pocket! To browse the Internet, a full version of Safari (naturally) is supplied (no word on the ability to install the Mac version of Firefox - yet!). Nothing but wow!

Nick writes:

“After much discussion, we’ve decided that the deal proposed by PayPerPost just isnt right for us or our community. It’s regrettable that we should part ways as I still feel that Dan and Ted are stand up guys breaking new ground, but in the end, the deal was just not right for them or us.”

Instead - their metrics package will become Open Source which means it will end but become available to the developer community to do with as they please.

Nick is also recommending that if you do not want to wait for the open source version to be released that you should try Feedburners Blog Stats which has just gone live.

Dick and the FB guys are good friends of Performancing and I can’t think of a better place to send the Performancing Metrics users.

Read Nick’s official post here

How do we select our finalists? We evaluate hundreds of candidates—some suggested by readers, colleagues and friends, others discovered during countless hours of surfing. Many of this year’s choices are shining examples of Web 2.0: next-generation sites offering dynamic new ways to inform and entertain, sites with cutting-edge tools to create, consume, share or discuss all manners of media, from blog posts to video clips.

They say that the reason for the purchase appears to be for PayPerPost to get access to the 28,000 Performancing users, most of whom are bloggers and potential customers of PayPerPost. The popular Performancing Firefox blog editing plugin is not being acquired, and will be spun off into a new brand.

Update: It is offical here is the press release from Business Wire with all the “formal” details.

Techcrunch » Blog Archive » Web 2.0: The 24 Minute Documentary

technorati tags:web2.0